42. Balch, Robert and David Taylor. "Seekers and Saucers: The Role of the Cultic Milieu in Joining a UFO Cult." American Behavioral Scientist 20 (6), 1977a: 839-60.

A sketch of the Bo and Peep movement, which demanded of recruits renunciation of all ties and possessions and a nearly instantaneous decision to join. The movement was subdivided into travelling cells. An important process was a highly individual psychic "tuning in" to beings on a higher plane, which demanded "100%" of one's time. One was not to help or even pay much attention to other members; there was no ritual in this "epistemological authoritarianism" (p. 843.) There was no "hard sell;" rather, encounters with prospects were stereotyped; no practical questions were answered (e.g., "how do you live?") and no affective ties with members were allowed to be formed; this was ideologically forbidden-one was to become superhuman with the aid of UFO aliens by first renouncing humanity.

Great demands were made; showing up at meetings following first contact was very difficult, rather like a game of treasure hunt, following hidden clues. The movement was not deviant, in prospects' own terms. Likely prospects were seekers, described as "protean men" with "ideological hunger" and "shifting allegiances" (p. 848). [However, it is possible to argue with this designation of the type. These people remained as they had been, devoted to the seeker's "career," with ties to nothing but the promise of personal growth. Though their allegiances to different groups and modes of seeking were highly variable, they all, apparently, remained dedicated to seeking itself, attached to their detachment.] They were self-centered, uncommitted, wanderers if not drifters, and many were veterans of the counter culture. Most were readily available, and joining entailed little material self-sacrifice. For them alternative views of reality were accepted, common, and, in their "cultic milieu," respected. Life, for them, was a series of "growth experiences." Many had friends' support to join, none were interfered with, and none were "disoriented." The message, though firmly rooted in the cultic milieu, innovated in expecting physical metamorphosis of followers and in anticipating extraterrestrial help.

Seeking is a self-feeding process based on "psychic deprivation," an anxiety which teachers exploit, knowingly or otherwise. It is a career with no limits, since the process of growth, as defined in the milieu, has no socially recognized end-point; enlightenment is inherently relative and there is always room for more. [These people might aptly be described as shoppers, spiritual consumers-and consumption in the material sense also has no inherent limits.] No radical conversion was expected: whatever one's past might have been, it was okay, a growth experience. Seekership evidently entails a nearly ultimate libertinism.

In the authors' view it is incorrect to speak of seekers as disoriented, as Lofland and Stark (1965: see item 438) do; instead, they are clearly oriented to their ill- or undefined spiritual goals and allow little to interfere with their pursuit. The endlessness of the quest (even God, in Bo and Peep's view, is not perfect) and the equation of growth with life suggest an implicit immortality, even for failed seekers. The process is self-rewarding in this and in other ways. Any form one's quest may take is guaranteed approval in the social context of seekership. This is also a closed system; as noted, it is self-rewarding though inconclusive: "you never know if you have passed a test" (p. 854), and doubt of any given message is equated with ignorance of its true significance, while acceptance indicates that one is comparatively close to mastery. In this group at least, there is no conversion in the strict sense. Here there is no radical break with the past, which is a series of similar adventures; consequently, the past is not recast in an unfavorable light, as in true conversion. All stages of the process have equal value, no part is rejected (though one informant commented that she "never realized how much shit [she'd] been into" (p.848). [This quote is ambigous; are we to take "shit" as pejorative, or in its neutral sense as equivalent to "stuff?"] Even those who left the group praised B and P for helping them grow, for the process is the goal, though the leaders were ultimately called "unimportant." Ironically, the Two's emphasis on detachment led to detachment even from themselves and their message. Belonging to such a movement for a while is only an episode in a continuity, and losing is an impossibility.

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