So you want to join a pseudo-religious movement?   The times they are a-changing, and so are religious cults. Gone are the poker-faced, black-clad doomsday sects - they simply didn’t hold up in the ever-changing, dynamic religious marketplace. The new hot religions have had to adopt a set of new features to attract new customer-worshippers. Powerbase Alpha wants to give you a head start by introducing some of the bleeding-edge pseudo-religious movements and determining which of them is the most streetwise. We should start by dismissing some of the alternatives summarily. Scientology does have some claims to hipness, since it was invented by a kooky SF writer and investigated by luminaries like Bill Burroughs; it also boasts a lot of gear - eccentric machines designed for fine-tuning the human brain. On the other hand, we feel that it has been around too long, and hey - who wants to be associated with a movement that has been embraced by Tom Cruise and John Travolta? Aum Shinryoko, which on the surface has all the right stuff - psychedelic drugs, genetic engineering, and high-tech equipment - is not a serious alternative; even being the hard-nose, insensitive semi-robots with little or no concern for human values that we Powerbasians are, we feel that it was a Bad Thing to try to kill of Tokyo’s population with sarin. After all, who would make our Pokémons, our Hello Kitty sex toys and robot pets if Japan was wiped out? No, the only real candidates today are Falun Gong and the Raël movement. Surfing the web sites of these movements brings hours of endless joy. Let’s take a brief look at each of these. Falun Gong Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, became instantly well-known all over the world in 1999, when it was banned by the Chinese government. Founded by the flamboyant Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong is a mish-mash of traditional Chinese belief systems, spiced up with a few New Age-style modifications (although the followrs emphatically deny the New Age connection). ‘Falun’ means ‘the wheel of the law (or dharma)’, and this wheel is supposed to be located in the lower abdomen. One of the more gullible followers in southern China actually died after trying to extract the wheel of the law by cutting up his stomach. Do not try this at home. Falun Gong has gained support largely because it is disliked and even vehemently opposed by the government (although many of the officials in the higher echelons are said to be hard-core devotees). In China, Falun Gong invites comparisons with anti-authoritarian religious movements that have traditionally risen to oppose the ruling dynasty. Examples include the Taiping rebellion in the mid-19th century, a pseudo-Christian movement whose devotees thought themselves to be invisible, and whose uprising threw the country into turmoil, and the White Lotus rebellion against the Qing dynasty, led by a ‘master of martial arts and medicine’, Wang Lun, in 1770. Although Falun Gong may be politically correct, at least to Western eyes, its teachings are kooky indeed. There is a system of ‘levels’ that practitioners may attain if they perform the exercises advocated by Master Li, like ‘Penetrating the Two Cosmic Extremes’, ‘Falun Heavenly Circulation’ and ‘Strengthening Supernormal Powers’. Reaching level 4, for instance, the Falun buff’s vision and hearing will become supremely enhanced, and latter levels bring skills like levitation and the opening of the Third Eye. The benefits are immense; just witness this testimony from a 12-year-old devotee in Toronto: "I used to like to boss around the other kids at school, but I don’t want to do that any more." A category where Falun Gong loses out in the hipness department is the anal-retentive insistence upon the superiority of Falun Gong over all other belief systems. Master Li’s words must be heeded at all times, and you cannot practice Taiji or Qigong on the side, because this will ‘pollute your wheel’. On the plus side, the movement uses the internet extensively, and Master Li is holed up in an unknown New York apartment with his family, remote-controlling his devotees presumably through divinely gleaned Perl scripts and the like. Of course, no self-respecting contemporary pseudo-religion could do without aliens, so Li has thrown some of them into the mix, although it is unclear (to say the least) from the writings what they have to do with anything. Lots of people have tried to debunk Falun Gong, and the most fervent and successful of these must be Sima Nan, a kind of Chinese James Randi who has made a career out of replicating ‘miracles’ and embarrassing self-styled qigong masters. Sima claims, interestingly, that Falun Gong is not the biggest of China’s many qigong movements, even though it boasts 100 million practitioners (state officials say 2 million). He estimates that another organization, Zhong Gong, is probably the largest, with approximately 20 million devotees. Sima has been beaten up by Falun Gong fanatics and is not even especially liked by the government because of his penchant for ‘outing’ state officials associated with the movement. Rael The Rael movement was started by ‘Rael’, a former race car driver and sports journalist from France, who was contacted by aliens in 1973. The aliens claimed to have created all life on earth, and since mankind is now just beginning to crack the secret of life, they decided the time was ripe for contact. In Rael’s universe, the aliens are like nice big brothers; they harbour no evil intentions, and just want to make contact and chat with their erstwhile creations. So Rael’s mission is to establish an ‘alien embassy’ on earth to facilitate the inter-planetary merriment. Recombinant DNA technology is one of the cornerstones of the Raelian movement. Their website features a biochemistry timeline and information about artifical life. Strangely, they have thrown in some amazingly simple-minded arguments against neo-Darwinism; for instance, they claim that since it has been proven that DNA repair mechanisms exist (and it has, indeed), mutations do not occur, and therefore evolution through random mutations becomes impossible. Well… The Raelian movement has, however, recruited a number of competent biologists, and even started a Bahama-based company, ClonAid, that aims to clone humans. Cloning yourself will set you back $200,000, but you can also opt to clone your pet (using the CLONAPET technology), which will be cheaper. You will also be able to clone your children, in case anything happens to them, and if they have a lethal genetic defect, they will be frozen until the tecnology exists to deal with the problem. Thus, Raelians are also interested in life-extension research and cryonics, and regularly invite researchers from these areas to speak at their conferences. Incidentally, they carry a link to the Transhumanist Society on their webpage, and one can only speculate whether the interest runs one way or both ways. But the movement is not all about science. It promotes a raucuous, rambunctious attitude towards life, as expressed in the greeting message on their web page: "…the most politically incorrect and fearlessly individualistic philosophy of non-conformity". Now that’s what I call marketing. Many pseudo-religions could benefit from this unabashedly libertarian appeal to its followers. It certainly helps that the Raelian meetings are reported to be a blast; fringe-science talks are intercut with ‘sensual meditation according to instructions passed down to Rael by the aliens’, meaning sex - the Swedish Rael site encourages participants of the summer seminars to get a medical check-up and bring condoms. So here we have a movement with a well-designed site (though some of the links are dead), a happy-go-lucky approach to life (the site states that the Rael movement is about ‘seeking fun and pleasure’), and a heavy reliance on genetic engineering. However, its customer base is still small, and its impact is nowhere near Falun Gong, maybe because the latter has implemented tried-and-tested Eastern belief systems so that a wide range of people can be attracted. In short, Rael needs more market research. Which one is better? After this presentation, we are sure that the intelligent, well-informed citizen can easily make up her mind. But just for completeness’ sake, let’s state our own opinion. We feel that the accolade for the most streetwise pseudo-religion has to be awarded to Rael. Not just because it is smaller and ‘fringier’, but because of its sheer brashness and total devotion to fun. It seems like a regular happy mutant cult. Still, we would be eager to hear the first reports of abuses; will they stalk droputs, for instance? (On the other hand, who would want to exit such a fun-filled, sensuous organization?) Falun Gong has the mass appeal, but is simply too single-minded for the global citizen (aside from the fact that Master Li has been making derogatory comments about all non-Chinese people). It has the aliens, it has the levitation, but it simply doesn’t fly. If you still feel that Falun Gong is your bag, may we suggest some desolate Taoist village in Taiwan, or modelling your own cult in your home area based on the 6th century Chinese hippie Taoists who dropped out, lived in the mountains, practiced sexual magic, tried to make immortality potions and drank wine and mercury. - Mikael Huss.