Universe People or Cosmic People of Light Powers ( cs, Vesmírní lidé sil světla) is a Czech and Slovak UFO religion founded in the 1990s and centered on Ivo A. Benda. Their belief system is based upon the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations communicating with Benda and other

contactee Contactees are persons who claim to have experienced contact with extraterrestrials. Some claimed ongoing encounters, while others claimed to have had as few as a single encounter. Evidence is anecdotal in all cases. As a cultural phenomenon, c ...

s since October 1997

telepathically Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...

and later even by direct personal contact. They are considered to be the most distinctive UFO religion in the Czech Republic. Following the mass suicide of the members of the cult Heaven's Gate in 1997, the Universe People attracted the attention of Czech media as a group with similar ideology and potential to commit similar acts. The probability of this development has diminished in later years (2004). On several occasions, the group also managed to appear in the Czech and Slovak mass media.

History

Ivo A. Benda began his public activities in the middle of the 1990s. He has organized more than 180 lectures, visited by more than 12,000 people (according to his own words). In 1997 he published the book ''Rozhovory s poučením od mých přátel z vesmíru'' (''Interviews With Instructions From My Friends From the Universe''). At the beginning of the 2000s he managed to penetrate the mass media, he appeared in the Nova TV and in the

Czech Television Czech Television ( cs, Česká televize, italics=no ; abbreviation: ČT) is a public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic, broadcasting seven channels. Established after the Velvet Revolution in 1992, it is the successor to Czechoslov ...

(Czech state broadcasting channel). Some of the visitors of his public lectures considered his speeches as a perfect mystification or joke, however, psychiatrists labelled his performances as a bizarre psychotic

delusion A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some o ...

. From 1998 to 2000, the ideology of the Universe People was close to sectarianism, with a central idea of coming cosmic catastrophe and evacuation of people to another planet. However, their later efforts moved to defence against the attacks of negative extraterrestrial beings, called '' saurians'' or '' lizard people'' (in Czech: ''ještírci''). In the second half of the 2000s, Ivo Benda and his group became more publicly known also in

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

. In 2007, the Slovak private television channel TV JOJ reported that the Universe People sent instructions on how to defend against attacks of evil extraterrestrial entities to the Slovak Ministry of Defense. The envelopes also contained suspicious material, which alarmed the Slovak Military Police and security services. One of the buildings of the Ministry was evacuated. These envelopes contained instructional CDs and promotional materials of the group. Ivo Benda stated on TV: "If you were attacked by a lizard man from an outer world, the Ministry of Defense should defend the people, shouldn't it? Or do you consider those lizard people as friends?" The suspicion of a security threat was unproven.

Ideology

According to Benda, extraterrestrial civilizations operate a fleet of spaceships, led by Ashtar Galactic Command, orbiting the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

.Vojtíšek (2004), p. 281 They closely watch and help the good and are waiting to transport their followers into another dimension. The Universe People's teachings incorporate various elements from

ufology Ufology ( ) is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial alien visitors). While there are instances of government, private, and f ...

(some foreign contactees are credited, though often also renounced after a time as misguided or deceptive),

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

(

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

was a "fine-vibrations" being) and conspiracy theories (forces of evil are supposed to plan compulsory chipping of the population). Benda based his philosophy on information from many independent books, including ''Angels In Starships'' (Giorgio Dibitonto), ''Inside The Spaceships'' ( George Adamski), ''Bringers Of The Dawn'' (Barbara Marciniak) and others. He also adopted parts of Swiss citizen Billy Meier's philosophy. However, Benda's philosophy is in some points in conflict with Meier's and Meier has declined any contacts with Benda and does not recognize his movement. Members of the movement distrust modern technologies and control mechanisms of the society. They consider

mass media Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit information ...

to be a tool of oppression and manipulation. Despite this, Benda often seeks contact with journalists to tell his ideas to the public. They often have problems with

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

, because Benda has declared that the only

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

owners are the Universe creatures, who do not consider it important. The movement also wants to abolish money.

Opponents and cultural impact

Opponents consider Benda and some more active of his followers to be mentally ill and the Universe People to be a potentially dangerous

cult In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This ...

. According to Zdeněk Vojtíšek (from the anticult ''Society for Studying of Sects and New Religious Movements''), the movement represents a possible danger because of its religious background and similar features with Christianity. In 2000, Benda announced the organization of the ''1st World Symposium of Love'', held at the Prague Castle under the auspices of the President

Václav Havel Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as ...

. Havel's office denied his claims. Benda later stated that three months before the Symposium Havel had said that he would attend, but later changed his mind.Ivo A. Benda's interview for osud.cz
/ref> The group's enthusiastic propaganda on the Internet (a large website in garish colours) including

spam Spam may refer to: * Spam (food), a canned pork meat product * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...

, the nature of their recorded "messages" as well as attempts to comment on every aspect of life and appropriate any popular notion (life in '' The Matrix'', for example) has built it an Internet cult following who make fun of it and even visit Benda's frequent rambling public lectures.

Notes

References

External links