Alien Philosophy and the Golden Temple

Interstellar Indoctrination

There's a feeling I used to get on mornings when I could sleep as late as I wanted, back when I didn't
always wake up tired and being asleep wasn't equivalent to being at risk. I don't often have that feeling
now, maybe partly because of my age and the various pains that come along with that, but partly due to
less obvious influences. I do remember how it was to feel that way, and I miss it.

In that floating reverie of well being that comes only when you've slept aplenty and are at peace with the
world, I had my first waking vision, back in the early 70's when all this really began forcing itself towards
the surface of my life. I had almost fallen asleep again, drifting into a gray mist of semiconsciousness,
when a portal opened through that mist and I was suddenly looking down as though through clouds, onto
a vast expanse of green forest canopy. It was an ecstatic experience, like flying almost, but without any
sense of having a physical body. I was a point of consciousness drifting down through a hole in the clouds
to float slowly on the wind above a primeval landscape unmarked by human constructions--no power
lines, no farms, no roads, just trees, the way it used to be, in the times before people messed things up.

What shocked me out of that wonderful drifting journey was the appearance of a clearing in that forest
and an ornate golden temple within it. It seemed completely out of place to me; I wondered how it could
exist in that pristine setting, and how there could be no roads to it. It seemed completely fanciful.

For several mornings afterwards, my waking reverie would take me back to this place, until I began to
accept that it might actually be real. I could people walking towards it, all wearing odd white robes. To
me, it seemed like an idyllic place, and I wondered if it might be possible to actually build such a temple. I
began planning to someday live in a place like that, a house in the wilderness, and no roads to it.

I did not know then that this was one of the marks of a culture unknown to Earth. It may not be my first
encounter with the Ship and the ideas it carries, but it seems to be my first memory of it.

The Golden Temple was a real place to me in those early years of contact. I was there many times, often
with the same people, never knowing how I arrived there and always accepting my presence there without
a hint of curiosity as to why. I felt honored and awed to be there, even though the circumstances were
rather awkward. The clothing we wore was the main problem. All of us, men and women, wore stiff white
tunics that came down to mid thigh, and that was all we wore. This place had no concept of roads, and no
concept of underwear. As I was in my 20's and easily aroused, and since many of the disciples attending
were attractive young women, the lack of clothing caused me some distress. In what seemed to be sacred
religious surroundings, the sexuality I felt seemed out of place to me, but was not seen that way by others
there. It was instead accepted and encouraged. I do not recall that it ever led to sex, but it did lead to
friendships.

I remember being in one of the waiting areas, one of several sunken alcoves off the central chamber.
Benches lined the alcove walls, potted ferns and fountains dotted the open space, and while we waited to
become enlightened we broke into twos and threes and held serious discussions in those private settings.
On this occasion, I recognized someone in the crowd, a young woman with short dark hair, about my own
age, who I thought I knew from high school. Going up to her I realized that wasn't it, but I was still sure I
knew her. She did recognize me, with the same odd confusion of memory on her own part. We sat in an
alcove together and talked excitedly about temple business, until it became obvious that my mind was on
other things. It could have been an awkward moment, but was not. That was one of the temple teachings,
that holiness and sexuality are not separate.

In lectures I would listen to the robed monks informing us of philosophies that seemed all too familiar, and
I would feel that in those terms, the spoken words, I was learning nothing very remarkable. In the other
terms, the unspoken attitudes and new mores, I was being changed on a basic level, brought back to a
system of thought that is ancient rather than new. Some of that I could, and still do accept; some of it has
never felt right to me. I was not being offered a choice of beliefs. Either I accepted the entire system, or I'd
not be invited back.

I wasn't the only person back in those days who was dreaming of the Golden Temple. It turned out to be a
fairly common experience for my generation; many people were coming forward with their own accounts
of the temple and its teachings, and some were even writing books about it. Brad Steiger was one of the
first to write publicly on the subject; hearing him speak on a Seattle radio show was the first indication I
had that I might be experiencing something real. He mentioned in that broadcast that some contactees
had other things in common, including some physical traits and habits that indicated a possible common
ancestry. Most had been visited by spiritual beings at age five, or had some other intense awakening
experience at that age. His theory was that a small percentage of people here on Earth carry the genes of
extraterrestrial ancestors who crash landed here eons ago. Seeing that their own culture had little chance to
survive here among the hordes of Earth born savages who dominated the planet, they found ways to
hardwire their people with cultural DNA packets set to activate at important points in the evolution of the
planet, so that the seeds of the old culture would take root again and flourish in the better and future days.

Steiger himself was a contactee, channeling books from extraterrestrial entities and writing about his own
experiences; he had been contacted by someone who at that time he was not allowed to identify except as
"a well known author of science fiction," who had personally experienced the DNA explosion. Only in
recent years was this person revealed to be Philip K. Dick, whose book Valis was his attempt to describe
his own experience in fictional form. (Read about Steiger's involvement with him in this article in Alternate
Perceptions Magazine Issue 118 November 2007). Steiger's own experience is discussed in his book
Revelation: The Divine Fire; and that of Francine Steiger in her book, Reflections in an Angel's Eye.

There were so many similarities between my experiences and theirs that I wondered if I might be one of
these Star People, as Steiger chose to call them. I had most of the physical signs, if not all; a few were
marginal, the sort of thing one might answer with yes or no and still be accurate. I'd had the encounter at
age 5, although not the angelic visitation many reported. I'd not had the awakening signal despite having
had many of the indoctrination experiences involving the Temple. For me, the awakening call came years
later, two decades after my conscious interaction with these beings began.

Back in 1976, when Steiger began to write about the Star People, the one important mark I'd had for
certain was the dream some reported as their first "aware" memory; the first firing of their hidden DNA
message was a personal memory of the crash of the ship that brought them here. I knew exactly what they
meant.