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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1976)
Travel by UFO’s Two believers offer trip to new existence By JACK WILSON Of the Emerald A man in his early thirties and a woman in her late teens travel the West Coast in a black Ford station wagon more or less in continuous contact with beings not of this world. I had a rendezvous with the two at the Glenwood Cafe. It was the closest I'll ever get to taking an alien to lunch. David and Randy are disciples of “The Two," whom they believe to be Christ like figures descended from “a higher level” to teach humanity how to trans cend its local planetary existence. Heavy stuff, to be sure, but 20 people left their lives in Waldport last fall to follow the mysterious couple into outer space. As far as I could tell, none of them got much further than Indiana, yet David and Randy share a belief that is beyond fanaticism, a conviction that mere events cannot shake. The early belief that a UFO would come to Earth and carry away the true believers has developed into a curious blend of science fiction and Christianity. “This is a special time that has come to this garden, this planet," David says bet ween mouthfuls of chefs salad. “There is a door, a physical door, for people who are ready to make the transition to the next evolutionary level into the Kingdom of Our Father." Essentially, the idea is that “The Two" are higher beings whose mission is to teach people how to attain a higher phys ical and spiritual plane. The means are traditional: faith and self-denial. The ends, however, belong to America in the mid 70s. People “raise the frequency of V. their physical vibrations” until "a UFO will physically come down and beam them up.” Outside the Glenwood Cafe the traffic along Franklin Boulevard speeds through the gauntlet of heavy machin ery, past the chainsaw-sculpted bust of the late John F. Kennedy and on into the Weyerhaeuser mists of Springfield. David and Randy nod as the waitress pours more coffee and present a picture of life on the “next level.” "It's like the whole universe is your home,” Randy says. A favorite image is the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. In the next level there is no death, no desire, no corporeal existence as we know it. Until "The Two" arrived, says David, Jesus was the most recent emissary from the higher level. The Bible, en cased in 2,000 years of doctrine, was written by people who "did not have the mental competency to comprehend” the true meaning of Christ's message. One look at David's or Randy’s face con vinced me they were serious. How do such bizarre beliefs gain un questioning acceptance in apparently stable minds? What flash of revelation, real or imagined, led this couple to leave their comfortable lives and go about pro selytizing like misplaced characters from a Kurt Vonnegut novel? "When I heard the message,” David says, "it rang a bell that said yes, now I can become more of what I am.’ It’s like remembering why you're on this planet." Randy shakes her head. "Analogies, analogies...” David and Randy did not know each other before they set out to comprehend the incomprehensible. They change their names from time to time to avoid "being identified with what we've done rather that with what we are." Neither is eager to talk about the past, but appar ently Randy lived with her boyfriend in the woods near Santa Cruz and David was "an IBM type" in San Jose before they found their curious destiny. They travel more or less at random, sleeping in campgrounds, under bridges, and when fortune smiles, in motels. “We don't have any financing,” David says as I pick up the check and ' figure the tip. "We are led to people who Drawing try JoAnn Fahtgran can nelp us. v»« nave to place faith in Our Father's ability to take care of us." According to David, about 100 people around the country share their mission They go from city to city in couples, or ganizing meetings, trying to get people ready for when the UFO comes. A meeting is planned for 3 p.m Tues day in the Eugene Public Library. We don't really care if anyone comes," David says. The next level uses our computer, our minds, to relate informa tion through us at these meetings. I paid the bill and watched David and Randy drive their black Ford spaceship off into the Glenwood afternoon Yale (Continued from Page 1) havior which could not, under the Constitution, be regulated directly by an exercise of the federal ad ministrative or criminal law." Fourth, Brewster said the gov ernment should take the role of investor in higher education just as “the role of government in basic research is that of investor also, not a purchaser of specified goods and services." He said when the federal dollar is being spent, “Congress seems entitled to regulate without inhibi tion." The rationale behind this, he says, “has a ring of plausibility.” "Says Senator Kennedy, If we are paying for medical education why shouldn’t we have a right to prescribe what we are paying for?' This he says when he seeks to impose upon medical schools the obligation to draft a specified per centage of their students for ser vice where doctors are most needed, and seeks to prescribe what departments a medical school should include.' Brewster compared this pur chasing of educational manpower to the way government procures a defense contract. "Naturally when you buy something you do feel that you have a right to specify what you are contracting for. But/ education, and especially basic research, are not products to be bought off the shelf. They are not even products to be made to Washington specification. Educa tion and research are not pro ducts, they are processes. 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