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Scientist
American Behavioral
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/20/6/839
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/000276427702000604
1977 20: 839American Behavioral Scientist
Robert W. Balch and David Taylor
UFO Cult
Seekers and Saucers : The Role of the Cultic Milieu in Joining a
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[839]
Seekers and Saucers
The Role of the Cultic Milieu
in Joining a UFO Cult
ROBERT W. BALCH
DAVID TAYLOR
University of Montana
This UFO cult has been much in the news of late. Of special note in
thispaper is the very positive redefinition of the role of seeker. Also, the
puzzlingfinding that affective ties between converts and group members
seem unnecessary for conversion to occur is discussed, along
with the similarly disconcerting idea that the group lacks ritual
behavior.
During the early 1970s there was a resurgence ofreligious interest
in the United States. Especially popular were the cults and sects
which either drew their inspiration from non-Western religious
traditions or rejected the moral relativism of the established
Christian churches. Some of these groups, especially the Unified
Family and the Children of God, grew so rapidly and transformed
their members so completely that they were accused of
&dquo;brainwashing&dquo; and &dquo;psychological kidnapping.&dquo;
One of the most notorious cults captured national attention
during the fall of 1975 when over 30 people suddenly disappeared
in Oregon after attending a lecture about flying saucers. At the
meeting, a middle-aged man and woman who called themselves
Bo and Peep offered their audience eternal life in the &dquo;literal
heavens.&dquo; Bo and Peep-or the Two, as their followers called
them-claimed to be members of the kingdom of heaven who
had taken human bodies to help mankind overcome the human
level of existence.I
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[840] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
Bo and Peep’s prescription for salvation was rigorous. In
order to enter the &dquo;next evolutionary kingdom,&dquo; their followers
had to abandon their friends, families, jobs, and material possessions.
They traveled around the country in small &dquo;families,&dquo;
camping and generally leading a spartan existence. Bo and Peep
told them they would be taken to heaven in UFOs if they could
overcome all their human emotions and worldly attachments-a
process they called Human Individual Metamorphosis. The
name referred to a &dquo;chemical and biological change&dquo; that would
transform their followers into new creatures with indestructible
bodies.
Bo and Peep’s UFO cult was one of the remarkable religious
success stories of the mid-seventies. Within seven months after
their first meeting in Los Angeles, the Two may have attracted
as many as 150 followers.2 The figure is noteworthy, because
over 100 of them were recruited in just four meetings held in
California, Oregon, and Colorado. The Oregon meeting is not
only significant because of the national publicity it received,
but because approximately 35 people decided to join afterwards.
Most remarkable of all is that the Two rarely gave prospective
members more than a week to make up their minds, and, when
someone did, it was usually after less than six hours’ contact
with either the Two or any of their followers. The media speculated
about brainwashing, and some ex-members got national
coverage themselves when they accused the Two of &dquo;mind control.&dquo;
However, the accusation is not only sensational, but
incorrect. In the following pages we argue that the decision
to join Bo and Peep’s UFO cult can only be understood in terms
of the unique point of view of the metaphysical seeker, whose
outlook is shaped by a religious underworld variously known as
the cultic milieu (Campbell, 1972), the occult social world
(Buckner, 1965), or the metaphysical subculture (Balch and
Taylor, 1976b).
DATA COLLECTION
Shortly after Bo and Peep’s Oregon meeting, we joined the
UFO cult as hidden observers.3 During the next seven weeks
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[841]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
we traveled with several different families, observing and taking
part in every aspect of their daily lives. Six months later we
interviewed 31 ex-members in Arizona, California, Florida,
Montana, and Oregon. Locating former members proved to be a
difficult task, requiring extensive travel and a considerable
amount of detective work. Using simple &dquo;snowball&dquo; samplingeach
informant suggesting additional contacts-we eventually
located 37 ex-members, six of whom preferred not to discuss
their experiences. Although we did use an interview schedule,
all interviews were informal and followed whatever format our
respondents preferred. On the basis of the data we collected
about cult members during the participant-observer phase of our
study, we are confident that our sample is representative of the
cult’s membership.
Most members ofthe cult were in their early twenties, although
their ages ranged from 14 to 58. There were roughly equal
numbers of males and females when we joined, but, for reasons
still unclear, a greater number of men was recruited during the
time we observed the cult. A large minority had attended college,
and the younger members were indistinguishable from college
students anywhere in the United States. Their median occupational
status was rather low, reflecting the cult’s overall youthfulness
and the fact that most members had changed jobs
frequently, preferring not to be tied down to a routine that
would limit their personal freedom.
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF
THE UFO CULT
The UFO cult was a loosely organized collection of seekers
that depended on the charismatic appeal of Bo and Peep to hold
it together. The Two and their followers traveled around the
country holding public meetings to tell other seekers about
their message. They moved every few days, camping out as they
went. Encounters with the outside world were limited to a few
highly structured situations. In order to survive, they asked
for food, gasoline, and money at stores and churches, but their
contact with outsiders was limited to asking for help. Only
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[842]~MERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
rarely did members explain who they were or mention Bo and
Peep. Members also had contact with outsiders during public
meetings. After the message had been presented, by either Bo
and Peep or some of their followers, anyone in the audience could
approach members of the cult to have his questions answered.
However, the interaction was limited to discussing the message,
and the answers given by members of the cult were often so
stereotyped that they sounded like tape-recordings.
In order to speed up the metamorphic process, Bo and Peep
assigned each of their followers a partner, usually a person of
the opposite sex. The partnership was the basic unit of social
organization. Its purpose was to develop &dquo;friction&dquo; and,
ultimately, awareness of the human qualities each person had to
overcome. Although partners were supposed to stay together 24
hours a day, sexual relationships and even friendships were
discouraged. They were not only &dquo;too human,&dquo; but they prevented
the &dquo;friction&dquo; that would accelerate the metamorphosis.
Bo and Peep camped with their followers until a month after
the Oregon meeting. Then, for reasons still unclear, they went
into seclusion, explaining that they would return just before
the spaceships came. They never set a date, however, and most of
their followers never saw them again. Before they left, the Two
divided the cult into several &dquo;families&dquo; of about 14 members
each. Each family was headed by two spokesmen-a partnership
appointed by Bo and Peep. However, their duties were never very
well defined, and most members preferred a democratic arrangement
where everyone had an equal voice. The spokesmen may
have been appointed by the Two, but they were still earthly
seekers like everyone else. Within a few weeks most spokesmen
either had been replaced, or their position had been eliminated
altogether.
Each family was completely autonomous, traveling almost
constantly, going wherever it felt it was being led. Family members
held public meetings of their own as they traveled. Most
of them were small, but a few attracted audiences of several
hundred people, and some of them were surprisingly successful,
even without the charismatic presence of the Two. A meeting in
northern Arizona produced nine new members, eight of them
from a town with less than 500 people. Another meeting in
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[843]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS I
Berkeley, California, recruited as many as 20. But generally
these meetings produced nothing more than catcalls and insults,
or at best interested questions. During their random movements
across the country, families rarely kept in touch with each
other, and after the press lost interest in Bo and Peep’s odyssey,
many families had no way of learning anything about other
members of the UFO cult.
Despite the importance of partnerships and families, the UFO
cult was highly individualistic, a feature consistent with the
individual nature of Bo and Peep’s metamorphic process. Each
member of the cult had to establish a direct psychic connection
with a member of the next level, a process the Two called &dquo;tuning
in.&dquo; Bo and Peep instructed each of their followers to devote
&dquo;100 per cent of his total energy&dquo; to &dquo;the process,&dquo; which left no
time for mundane activities like reading, singing, listening to
the radio, or socializing with friends.
While traveling, the preferred arrangement was one partnership
per vehicle, to prevent unnecessary social interaction.
Although the rule was frequently violated, partners were expected
to set up their camp away from other members of their
family, and to keep to themselves except during family meetings.
Aside from a brief period when members tuned in together before
meetings, there was an absence of ritual in the UFO cult. Even
this had its origins in Bo and Peep’s desire to keep idle conversation
to a minimum before meetings got underway. The Two
even told their followers not to help each other with everyday
jobs like fixing cars and putting up tents. They claimed that
helping was not only an &dquo;energy drain&dquo; for the helper, but
denied the person being helped an opportunity to confront and
overcome his human nature-whether anger, frustration, fear, or
overdependence on others.
Although we have referred to Bo and Peep’s following as a
cult, the group had a strong sectarian flavor (see Balch and
Taylor, 1977). According to Wallis (1974, 1975a, 1975b), the
fundamental criterion of the sect is &dquo;epistemological authoritarianism.&dquo;
Unlike the leaders of most cults, who recognize
many equally valid paths to the top of the spiritual mountain,
the Two claimed authoritative and privileged access to the Truth.
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[844]AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
In a flyer they prepared for prospective members, Bo and Peep
were quite specific about the uniqueness of their message:
This is no spiritual, philosophic, or theoretical path to the top
of the mountain. It is a reality; in fact it is the only way off the
top of the mountain.
The cult’s other sectarian features, e.g., its self-enforced separation
from the world, make sense in light of the fact that Bo and
Peep claimed to have the only path to true salvation.4
BECOMING A MEMBER OF THE UFO CULT
The recruitment process in the UFO cult was highly structured,
and varied little even after Bo and Peep disappeared. If
members felt that their connection at the next level wanted them
to hold a meeting, they would find a suitable place and put up
posters announcing the meeting, usually in &dquo;head shops,&dquo; in
health food stores, and around college campuses. After the Two
disappeared, speakers for each meeting were selected by other
members of the group. During the meeting itself they would be
flanked by members of their family, who were called &dquo;buffers&dquo;
because they absorbed the negative energy projected by hostile
members of the audience.
The entire presentation generally took 15 or 20 minutes, but
in one meeting we observed that the message was delivered in
only three minutes. After a lengthy question-and-answer period,
those who were sincerely interested in learning more about the
message would be invited to a follow-up meeting, usually held
in another place on the following day. These people would be
asked to leave their names and phone numbers so that they could
be contacted later that night. During the first meeting, the
location of the follow-up would be kept secret to prevent curiosity
seekers from showing up the next day. The follow-up
meeting was usually more informal. The message would be
restated, and the &dquo;prospective candidates&dquo; would have a chance
to ask any additional questions that had not been answered the
day before. At no time during our observations did we see
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[845]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
members of the cult try to convince the audience using &dquo;hardsell&dquo;
tactics that Bo and Peep’s message was true.
Within a few days of the follow-up meeting, those who were
ready to join were told the location of a &dquo;buffer camp&dquo; where
the socialization of new members would occur. Indoctrination in
the buffer camp was very low-key, consisting of informal discussions
around the campfire with Bo and Peep, and once in a while
a private audience with them in their tent. After the Two disappeared,
family spokesmen took over the job of socializing the
new members, but the nature of the process remained the same.
Rather than being subjected to intense social pressure and
eventual demands for public commitment, new members were
encouraged to spend as much time as they could alone with their
partners, getting in tune with the next level. Interaction between
new and old members was generally confined to informal
discussions around the campfire, when the newcomers were
encouraged to ask questions and express their doubts and
anxieties. Some of these meetings were spent in almost complete
silence, as members sat quietly around the fire tuning in, baking
potatoes, or just watching the stars.
The most significant feature of Bo and Peep’s recruitment
strategy was the way it limited interaction between members of
the cult and potential recruits. Virtually all such interaction
was confined to stereotyped encounters at the two public meetings
described above. When a prospective member decided to
join, leaving behind his friends, family, and career, he did so
on the basis of only a few hours of highly structured interaction
with members of the group. Under these circumstances, new
recruits almost never established close affective ties with members
of the cult before they joined. Furthermore, during those
two public meetings, the candidate learned very little about
the cult’s day-to-day existence. Since the Two believed that
everyone had to decide on the basis of the message alone, they
often refused to answer practical questions like &dquo;What do you
eat?&dquo; and &dquo;Where do you get your money?&dquo;
Even after a seeker decided to join, he got very little social
support from members of the cult. The buffer camp was usually
located a day’s drive away from the meeting place, and new
members had to get there on their own as a test of their commitJanuary
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[846] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
ment. In one case prospective members were given four days to
reach a post office 800 miles away, where they found directions
to the buffer camp scribbled in the Zip Code book. Nine people
decided to join that day, and all of them got to the camp on time
and became members of the group.
The absence of affective ties with members of the cult is
especially remarkable considering the importance of this factor
in the sociological literature on recruitment and conversion.
In their influential study of the &dquo;Divine Precepts&dquo; cult, Lofland
and Stark ( 1965) argue that &dquo;cult affective bonds&dquo; are a necessary
condition for joining. Yet Bo and Peep could recruit as many as
35 people at once without satisfying this condition.
Lofland and Stark ( 1965) distinguish between verbal and total
converts, with verbal converts defined as those who profess
belief and are accepted by core members, but take no active
part in the everyday life of the cult. According to Lofland and
Stark, &dquo;intensive interaction&dquo; is necessary to transform the
verbal convert into a total convert, who is behaviorally as well
as ideologically committed to the movement. They define
intensive interaction as &dquo;concrete, daily, and even hourly
accessibility&dquo; to other members which overcomes any remaining
uncertainty about the truth of the cult’s message (Lofland and
Stark, 1965: 873).
Although becoming a member of a deviant religious group is
usually seen as the end-product of a long process of social
interaction, the entire process in the UFO cult was compressed
into a few days. When new members arrived at the buffer camp,
they had already made a substantial behavioral commitment to
the cult. While some members had little to lose by joining, others
left behind good jobs, homes, and even small children. Many
new members began telling others about the message even before
they reached the buffer camp. The zeal of these &dquo;instant converts&dquo;
often exceeded the enthusiasm of the older members who
greeted them at the campground.
We would not deny the importance of intensive interaction
in strengthening the commitment of new members, but its role
has been exaggerated. New members of the UFO cult were most
likely to drop out during the first week after they joined, usually
because of loneliness or their inability to cut themselves off
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[847]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
from friends and relatives in the outside world. But the attrition
rate for new members is high in most cults and sects, even those
that do provide their fledgling recruits with strong social support
(e.g., Zablocki, 1971).
THE SOCIAL WORLD OF THE
METAPHYSICAL SEEKER
We believe that social scientists have overemphasized the
importance of cult affective bonds in recruiting new members,
because of the dominant conception of the cult as a deviant
religious organization. For example, Yinger (1970: 279) refers to
cults as &dquo;religious mutants, extreme variations on the dominant
themes by means of which men struggle with their problems.&dquo;
Because cults are deviant groups in a skeptical rationalistic
society, many social scientists have assumed that the people
who join them require a tremendous amount of social support to
draw them in and insulate them from a hostile disbelieving
world. However, if the seeker lives in a social milieu where
the movement’s assumptions make sense, and if he defines
joining as the logical extension of his spiritual quest, then
it is easy to understand how he could join a &dquo;deviant&dquo; religious
cult without first establishing social ties with those who already
belong. We will begin our discussion by characterizing the life
style of Bo and Peep’s followers before they joined the cult.
Then we will explore the social world of the metaphysical seeker,
showing how that style of life is an integral part of a cultic
milieu where joining a cult is not only tolerated, but often
encouraged.
THE PROTEAN STYLE
OF THE METAPHYSICAL SEEKER
In his discussion of the &dquo;protean man,&dquo; Lifton (1970) describes
the dilemmas confronting men and women in postindustrial
society. In response to &dquo;historical dislocation&dquo; and the &dquo;flooding
of imagery&dquo; produced by rapid change and mass communication,
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[848] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
Lifton argues that modern man has adopted a protean style,
named for the Greek mythical figure, Proteus, who could change
his form at will.
The protean style of self-process is characterized by an interminable
series of experiments and explorations-some shallow, some
profound-each of which may be readily abandoned in favor of
still new psychological quests. [Lifton, 1970: 319]
The description seems to fit members of the UFO cult very
well, especially their &dquo;strong ideological hunger&dquo; (Lifton, 1970:
319) and pattern of shifting allegiances.
Before joining Bo and Peep, members of the UFO cult had
organized their lives around the quest for truth. Most described
themselves as spiritual seekers. After listing all her previous
spiritual &dquo;trips,&dquo; a woman who joined the cult when we did
remarked: &dquo;Until I started talking to you, I never realized how
much shit I’d been into.&dquo; The woman, then 21, said she ran
away from home at age 15 &dquo;to find the truth,&dquo; and she had been
searching ever since. An older member aptly characterized their
perennial quest as a &dquo;bumper car ride through a maze of spiritual
trips.&dquo;
True to the protean style, most members of the cult moved
frequently and had relatively few material possessions and social
commitments. Their emotional ties with the conventional
American style of life were generally weak. Hardly any of them
had ever voted, and most of them were uninformed and unconcerned
about contemporary social and political issues. A disproportionate
number were remnants of the counterculture who
preferred to avoid commitments that would unduly restrict their
personal freedom. One man captured the protean flavor of his
life when we asked him what he had given up to follow the Two:
I gave up a lot to come on this trip, man. I gave up my record
collection, a set of tools, my old lady. But it’s not the first record
collection I’ve given up, and it’s not the first set of tools. And I’ve
had eight old ladies.
Although a significant number of cult members had given
up good jobs and comfortable homes to join the cult, most had
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[849]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
not. For some of the younger members, the material aspects of
life in the cult were not very different from what they had experienced
before they joined. For example, one new member hadjust
dropped out of the Christ Family, a small sect that wandered
barefoot from town to town, begging for its food and lodging.
For him the transition to Bo and Peep’s nomadic UFO cult was
easy. Many others had been traveling around the country with
backpacks or in remodeled vans, rarely staying anywhere for
more than a few weeks at a time.
Even those who made substantial material sacrifices to join
were not strongly attached to their possessions. A member who
joined after selling his house for five dollars explained: &dquo;For
me it was easy. I’m single. I just had some property to which
I never felt any attachment anyway.&dquo; Some of those who appeared
to have made the greatest sacrifice had been gradually
divesting themselves of their material possessions long before
they met the Two. In one instance publicized by the Oregon
press, a middle-aged couple supposedly abandoned their house
and family to join the cult. Actually one of their sons came
with them, and, even before they ever heard of Bo and Peep, they
had quit their jobs, sold their home, and moved into a commune,
where they were living when they decided to join.
The protean style of Bo and Peep’s followers is important,
because weak attachments to extracult relationships and
activities make one available for membership. Other things
being equal, a man with a good job, a family, and a respectable
position in the community is less likely to join a flying saucer
cult than a single male living alone or in a commune, with few
material possessions and a strong penchant for change and
excitement. To a great extent, the reason is the different degree
of social constraint in each person’s life.
THE ROLE OF THE SEEKER
IN THE CULTIC MILIEU
Although the protean style fits most members of the UFO
cult, we must avoid the trap of relating macroscopic structural
conditions to the microscopic world of individuals without
specifying the intermediate links in the causal chain. From
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[850] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
Lipton’s description of the protean man, it would seem that
individuals respond to the structural dislocations of our time as
if they were social isolates, completely out of touch with other
alienated members of our anomic society. However, alienation is
a collective phenomenon. As Zygmunt (1972: 256) points out,
men tend to become &dquo;alienated together.&dquo;
Before they joined, members of the UFO cult shared a metaphysical
world-view in which reincarnation, disincarnate spirits,
psychic powers, lost continents, flying saucers, and ascended
masters are taken for granted. This world-view, which Ellwood
(1973) calls the &dquo;alternative reality,&dquo; has a long history in the
United States. It is perpetuated by a cultic milieu that exists
in virtually every large community in the country. This milieu
consists of a loosely integrated network of seekers who drift
from one philosophy to another in search of metaphysical truth.
We have entitled this section &dquo;The Role of the Seeker&dquo; because
the concept of role places the individual seeker squarely in this
social milieu. Within the metaphysical social world, the seeker
is not disparaged as a starry-eyed social misfit. Instead, he is
respected because he is trying to learn and grow. Members of the
cultic milieu tend to be avid readers, continually exploring
different metaphysical movements and philosophies (Buckner,
1965; Campbell, 1972; Mann, 1955). Whether in a tipi in the
Oregon woods or a mansion in Beverly Hills, their evenings are
often spent with friends and acquaintances discussing metaphysical
topics like psychic research, flying saucers, or Sufi
mysticism. A significant part of their lives is devoted to the
pursuit of intellectual growth, however undisciplined that may
be in conventional academic terms.
There is a common expression in metaphysical circles: &dquo;There
are many paths to the top of the mountain.&dquo; The seeker believes
the quest for Truth is a highly individual process. As a longtime
seeker in the UFO cult put it: &dquo;It looks to me like we’re
all trying to find the way. But what works for me, what’s a test
for me, may not mean shit to you.&dquo; The long climb to the top of
the mountain is usually a zig-zag course, as the seeker tries one
path after another on the way up, always open to new ideas and
alternatives.
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[851]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
Like Lifton’s protean man, the seeker has a processual identity
which changes continuously throughout his life. To stop
exploring is to stop growing. Life is seen as an infinite series
of &dquo;growth experiences,&dquo; and the language of personal growth,
like Christian’s concept of humility, can be used to cope with
almost any crisis. No matter how much he had given up to follow
Bo and Peep, every one of the ex-members we interviewed
defined his membership in the cult as a good growth experience.
While a cynic might argue that this is nothing more than a
convenient rationalization for a stupid mistake, it is clear that
the quest for growth is part of the seeker’s vocabulary of motives
(Mills, 1940) that is learned and shared in the cultic milieu.
Many members of the UFO cult received strong support and
encouragement from their friends when they considered joining
the cult. Even many of those whose friends and relatives were
very skeptical reported that no one tried to hold them back:
&dquo;They told me, if that’s what you feel you have to do, then you
had better do it. It doesn’t matter what we think.&dquo;
Although it should be obvious, it is also worth noting that
seekers get married, have children, and socialize their sons
and daughters into the cultic milieu. As one member, whose
mother was an avid follower of Edgar Cayce, told us, &dquo;I was
raised on this stuff.&dquo; The youngest member of the UFO cult
was an extremely bright boy of 14 who had joined the cult with
his parents. For over a year before hearing the message, he had
read extensively about mysticism, psychic phenomena, health
foods, and spiritual healing. He had been socialized into the
occult social world, and the role of the seeker, even before he
had the chance to experience the unsettling social dislocations
described by Lifton.
The social nature of the alternative reality suggests that
we need to reformulate the conventional image of the seeker. Our
conception of the personally disoriented searcher &dquo;floundering
about among religions&dquo; (Lofland and Stark, 1965: 869, 870)
should be replaced with an image of one who is socially oriented
to the quest for personal growth. Seekership constitutes a social
identity that is positively valued by the individual and his
significant others.
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[852] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
A closer look at the alternative reality of the metaphysical
social world can help us understand how the Two could recruit
so many followers in such a short time without providing prospective
members with affective bonds to the group.
BO AND PEEP’S APPEAL
TO SUBCULTURAL VALUES
Although Bo and Peep’s message sounded bizarre to practically
everyone who read about it in the newspapers, it was
firmly grounded in the metaphysical world-view. Bo and Peep
put together an eclectic mixture of metaphysics and Christianity
that many seekers found appealing because it integrated a variety
of taken-for-granted beliefs, including flying saucers, reincarnation,
Biblical revelations, and the physical resurrection
of Jesus. (See Balch and Taylor, 1977, for a more complete
explanation of the cult’s belief system.) One of the Oregon
recruits described his reaction to the message this way: &dquo;There
were so many truths, man. I listened to Bo’s rap, and I’m thinking,
yeah, I’ve heard that before. He told me a lot of things I
already knew, but he put them all together in a way I’d never
thought of.&dquo;
Despite its roots in the taken-for-granted beliefs of the cultic
milieu, Bo and Peep’s message had many unique features, e.g.,
the physical nature of the metamorphic process and role of
UFOs in transcending the human level of existence. Yet, as
Wallis (1974, 1975a, 1975b) points out, the cultic milieu is
epistemologically individualistic, acknowledging many paths
to spiritual enlightenment. In the metaphysical social world
anything is possible. As one of our informants reminded us, it
was not too long ago that Buck Rogers, spaceships, and ray
guns were science fiction. Since then we have put men on the
moon and sent a spaceship to Mars, and laser-beams are now
being contemplated as military weapons. In a world that changes
as rapidly as ours, he said, one cannot afford to close one’s
mind to any possibility, even spaceships from heaven. Not many
seekers were completely convinced by the Two when they heard
the message, and many remained skeptical as long as they
belonged to the cult, but they set aside their doubts. Another
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[853]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
ex-member captured the openness of the metaphysical seeker
when he explained that the &dquo;willing suspension of disbelief’
is an essential part of any genuine spiritual quest.
Although Bo and Peep claimed that their metamorphic
process was the only way of getting to heaven, whenever they
spoke to an audience they couched the absolutism of their
message in language designed to appeal to the open-minded
tolerance of the seeker. They agreed that there were many equally
valid paths to the top of the mountain, but they added that only
a UFO could get the seeker off the mountain into the kingdom
of heaven that lies far beyond this planet.
In spite of the cult’s sectarian characteristics, even Bo and
Peep’s &dquo;process&dquo; was a direct outgrowth of the epistemological
individualism of the cultic milieu. The Two called their process
Human Individual Metamorphosis to emphasize the uniqueness
of each individual’s transformation. The psychic connection
established with the next level was unique for every member of
the cult, and no two individuals had the same attachments to
overcome. Nor would they require the same experiences to
complete their metamorphosis. As members were so fond of
saying: &dquo;The process is an individual thing.&dquo;
Bo and Peep also appealed directly to the value of personal
growth. It was a central part of their cosmology. According to
the Two, Earth is only one of many &dquo;gardens&dquo; throughout the
universe that supports life. All life forms are in a constant state
of flux, evolving slowly but steadily to higher levels of consciousness.
The Two compared Earth to a school, and mankind to its
students. As human beings advance through a procession of
lifetimes, they learn from their experiences, moving up through
the grades from kindergarten to graduation time.
Bo and Peep said that by abandoning his past and making a
connection with the next level, the seeker could accelerate his
growth to the point where he would actually convert himself into
an androgenous being. Even at the next level, there is no finality
or perfection as there is in the Christian’s heaven-only more
growth. They said that not even God is perfect, because perfection
means stagnation. As one member put it succinctly: &dquo;Growth
is life.&dquo;
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[854] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
THE SUBCULTURAL BASIS
OF THE MOTIVATION TO JOIN
The value placed on personal growth in the metaphysical
social world helps account for the motivation to join the UFO
cult. The prevailing image of the religious seeker is a social misfit
who experiences one crisis after another before he finallyjoins a
cult or a sect in order to cope with his problems. There is no
doubt that most members of the UFO cult had experienced
&dquo;psychic deprivation&dquo; (Glock, 1964) before they joined. In a
typical account, a young woman described the spiritual vacuum
of her life before Bo and Peep: &dquo;I could get high so many waysdrugs,
music, scenery, people-but I still felt an emptiness. I
never felt that fullness, that rock-bottom solidness I was looking
for.&dquo;
However, most social scientific studies of cults are overly
reductionistic in their focus on the personal problems of cult
members. They ignore the extent to which psychic deprivation is
generated by the role of the seeker. One of Lofland and Stark’s
(1965) subjects aptly described the seeker’s dilemma when she
said: &dquo;The more I search, the more questions I have.&dquo; The top
of the spiritual mountain is an elusive goal, continually receding
the higher the seeker climbs. The seeker is supposed to grow by
asking for tests and learning from his experiences, but growth is
subjective and hard to define. As one member explained: &dquo;You
never know if you pass a test.&dquo; In short, the motivation to
continue searching is built into the role.
As the seeker goes through life, he is attuned to signs that
might give his quest some direction. An axiom of the alternative
reality is that nothing happens by pure coincidence. Things
happen because they are meant to, and it is the seeker’s job to
ferret out the hidden meaning in everyday events that might
reveal his role in the cosmic plan.
Most of the ex-members we interviewed reported a series of
coincidences just before they joined which convinced them that
Bo and Peep’s message was true. Consider the case of a 22-year
old woman who joined in a small Arizona community where she
had been living for several months. She had been feeling restless
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[855]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
and thought about moving on, but she had no particular destination
in mind. Then one night during a violent thunderstorm, a
lightning bolt suddenly lit up her room while she was asleep.
As she sat up with a start, only half awake, she had a fleeting
vision of an open doorway suspended in the air directly in front
of her. At the time the meaning of the vision escaped her, but a
week later she met two members of the UFO cult who told her
about an open doorway in the heavens that would allow them to
leave the planet aboard UFOs. The coincidence of her restlessness,
the vision, and the sudden opportunity to join the UFO
cult was compelling evidence that she was meant at least to take
a closer look at Bo and Peep’s message.
The seeker is understandably open to metaphysical teachers
who might be able to clarify some of the confusion surrounding
his spiritual quest and accelerate his growth. In the world of
metaphysics there is a premium on hidden wisdom, whether
Kabbalistic lore, tales of astral visits with ascended masters, or
messages from benevolent space brothers. Metaphysics is the
study of things beyond the realm of normal human experience,
and the more obscure the hidden mysteries, the more the seeker
needs a teacher.
Whether consciously or not, metaphysical teachers often
maintain their authority by exploiting the seeker’s insecurity.
A skillful teacher can effectively suppress the open expression
of doubt by implying that his students will comprehend his
obscure metaphysical teachings according to their level of
spiritual awareness. Like the villagers in the story of the
emperor’s new clothes, not many students are willing to risk
revealing their ignorance by challenging a man they and their
fellow seekers consider a master of the hidden mysteries.
Bo and Peep played on the insecurity of the seeker in much the
same way. They compared their followers to twelfth graders who
were about to &dquo;graduate from the planet&dquo; because they had
evolved as far as they could in their present human form.
Supposedly the rest of mankind was unable to understand their
message because it was still plodding along through the other
Igrades.
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[856]AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
THE ABSENCE OF CONVERSION
IN THE UFO CULT
Members of the UFO cult were not converts in the true sense
of the word. Conversion, according to Travisano (1970: 600-
601), refers to the &dquo;radical reorganization of identity, meaning,
and life.... In conversion, a whole new world is entered, and the
old world is transformed through reinterpretation. The father
sees his bachelorhood as youthful fun; the convert sees his as
debauchery.&dquo; However, members of the UFO cult did not
undergo a serious rupture of identity when they became &dquo;total
converts&dquo; to Bo and Peep’s message. Instead, they defined &dquo;the
process&dquo; as a logical extension of their spiritual quest.
Unlike members of more sectarian organizations such as some
Jesus movement group who define their lives before &dquo;accepting
Christ&dquo; in very negative terms (Richardson et al., 1972), Bo and
Peep’s followers tended to look favorably on their pasts. The
following remark is typical: &dquo;This information clarified everything
we had been into before. It’s like the next logical step.&dquo;
The continuity between participation in the UFO cult and the
role of the seeker in the cultic milieu stood out most clearly when
members became disillusioned with the process and considered
dropping out. Their disillusionment was accompanied by
discernible changes in their everyday speech. Many words,
phrases, and conversational topics unique to the UFO cult began
to disappear from their talk. They stopped talking about UFOs
and the physical nature of the metamorphic process, and began
to emphasize how they had grown from their experience in
the cult.
In a manner consistent with the protean style, most exmembers
of the UFO cult insisted that Bo and Peep, however
misguided they appeared in retrospect, had accelerated their
spiritual growth by helping them overcome their mundane
attachments:
The most important thing is the process of becoming. Don’t get
hung up on the future. Just let it be. It doesn’t matter what you
call it-the process is the path, the way, the Tao. All the great
teachers were saying the same thing-Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha,
the Two.... The process is whatever you want it to be as long as
you’re free of attachments.
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[857]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
Paradoxically, the openness that allowed so many seekers to
suspend their doubts and follow the Two also facilitated the
process of dropping out. For example, one ex-member recalled
something his partner told him just before he decided to leave
the cult:
He said over and over again just before I left the trip: &dquo;We have
to keep an open mind about this thing, man. The Two may not be
who they say they are, but that’s not important. The Two aren’t
important.&dquo;
His comment is significant for two reasons. First, it illustrates
the seeker’s protean adaptability. It was fairly common for
members to argue, just before they left the cult, that Bo and
Peep were no longer important. The Two had merely brought
them some useful information, and now that they had learned all
they could from the process, it was time to move on, to overcome
even their attachment to Bo and Peep. Second, his comment
reflects the common belief that even a charlatan may have
something to offer. A reporter once asked a member what he
would think if Bo and Peep’s message turned out to be a hoax.
&dquo;Then I will still have grown,&dquo; he replied.
For most of Bo and Peep’s followers, then, becoming a
member of the UFO cult did not constitute the rejection of one
identity for another. Instead, their decision to follow the Two
was a reaffirmation of their seekership. Whenever one identity
grows naturally out of another, causing little disruption in the
lives of those involved, the term &dquo;conversion&dquo; is inappropriate.
Perhaps prospective members of a religious cult only need strong
social support from existing members when a radical substitution
of belief systems is required.
CONCLUSION
While there is no way of knowing how successful Bo and Peep
would have been with different recruitment methods, it is clear
that the absence of social interaction between members and
would-be recruits is not necessarily a fatal omission in recruiting
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[858] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
members to a contemporary religious movement. However
deviant it might appear to the outside world, a religious cult is
not necessarily deviant within the social world of the metaphysical
seeker. Even if it were, there are powerful norms that
encourage an open-minded assessment of deviant beliefs and
discourage condemning others for doing what they think is best
for themselves. When a religious seeker also has few social
commitments and material possessions, most of the major
restraints against joining a deviant religious cult are absent.
To a great extent, even the motivation to join such a group is
generated by social-psychological forces operating in the cultic
milieu.
The curious pattern of recruitment in Bo and Peep’s UFO cult
underscores the importance of studying religious cults in their
social and cultural context. The process of becoming a member
may vary greatly depending on the social milieu from which a
cult draws its members, and the extent to which membership
requires a transformation of one’s social identity in that milieu.
NOTES
1. Before their "awakening," the Two apparently led rather ordinary lives. Bo, who
was 44 at the time of the Oregon meeting, had been a music professor at a university in
Texas, and later a choir director for an Episcopal church. Peep, 48, had been a professional
nurse. After meeting in a Texas hospital in 1972, they opened a short-lived
metaphysical center specializing in astrology, spiritual healing, theosophy, and comparative
religions, where they first began to suspect their higher purpose on the planet. During
the next three years they spent much of their time traveling together, deliberately isolating
themselves from the rest of the world in order to learn more about their mission. It was
not until the spring of 1975 that they recruited their first followers at a private meeting
in Los Angeles.
2. Estimating the size of Bo and Peep’s following at any given time is hazardous,
because members were scattered across the country in small families, and no one, not even
the Two, kept track of the number of people recruited. While estimates of the cult’s size
at the peak of its popularity range up to 1,500, there were probably never more than 200
members, and 150 is probably more realistic. These figures are based on our own calculations
as well as estimates made by members themselves.
3. Although we were aware of the ethical objections to covert observation, we decided
to join the cult as hidden observers for pragmatic and methodological reasons. Pragmatically
there was no other way to study the cult effectively, because although members
spoke freely with reporters, they generally limited their comments to the "party line"
dictated by the Two. We believed the only way we could get accurate data about the cult
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[859]Balch, Taylor / SEEKERS AND SAUCERS
was to join it ourselves. Our judgment was supported by the sharp contrast we observed
between daily life in the cult and the way members presented themselves to the outside
world (Balch and Taylor, 1976a).
The pragmatic considerations that led to our joining as hidden observers dovetailed
nicely with our ethnographic methodological orientation. As Barkun (1974: 43) points
out in his recent study of millenarian movements, research that offers an "inside" perspective
is all too rare in the study of religious cults. The works of Festinger et al. (1956) and
Lofland and Stark (1965; Lofland, 1966) are conspicuous exceptions. They are notable
not only because they are unusual, but because of the significant contributions they have
made to the study of religious movements.
In addition to allowing us to enter the "backstage region" of the cult (Goffman,
1959), we believed our decision to join as hidden observers would enable us to see the
world through the eyes of Bo and Peep’s followers as no other method could. Several
months later, when we more openly interviewed members who had dropped out of the
cult, our "inside" knowledge of the group’s beliefs, organization, and membership helped
us focus our questions and contributed to the excellent rapport we enjoyed with our
respondents. As one ex-member said of another social scientist who had tried unsuccessfully
to study the cult: "He didn’t even know what questions to ask."
It is worth noting that we encountered no hostility when we revealed our "true"
identities prior to each interview, and no one refused to be interviewed because of the
deception. In fact, we were asked to contribute a chapter to a book about the cult that is
being written by several ex-members.
4. At this writing the UFO cult still exists, and its sectarian features are more pronounced
than ever before. Bo and Peep rejoined the remnants of their followingsometime
during the early months of 1976. Since their return, the cult has stopped recruiting and
has become very secretive, disappearing almost entirely from the public view. These
changes are described in Balch and Taylor (1977).
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