Sexy Apocalypse

Some of Rael's female followers
Image from here

Religion can be quite funny and occasionally weird if you are a sceptic or non-believer watching it from the periphery.  Believers pour hundreds of litres of milk on a mass of granite while thousands of children go hungry in the vicinity. Buxom ladies sweep littered floors of temples with much hardship while they won’t even dust the furniture at home. I can understand the ritualistic fulfilment that the believer derives from such practices because I was a similar believer myself once. There was a period in my life when I flagellated myself with my belt believing that would rein in my carnal addictions. Today such practices bring a wry smile to my lips.

That’s why, perhaps, the very title of the book Intelligent Design: Message from the Designers by Rael caught my fancy. The author-publisher advertised it as a kind of Bible inspired by the “intelligent designers” of life on earth. Curiosity egged me on and I read the entire stuff – a collection of three books, in fact, running to over 400 pages – in two days. I would have given it up as sheer balderdash had I not been amused thoroughly.

The first of the 3 books, The Book which Tells the Truth, describes the author’s encounter with an extra-terrestrial (ET) man (yes, man – one who looks just like you and me) who gives him a startling revelation: that life on earth was created by him and others like him on his planet which is about a light year away from the earth. Quite many of the biblical events from the Genesis to the Revelation are given entirely new and plausibly scientific interpretations. For example, the tree of life in biblical Eden becomes the advanced scientific knowledge possessed by the intelligent designers and the original sin becomes the betrayal of some of those alien designers who refused to obey the order to keep a distance from their terrestrial creatures. When the prophets of the Old Testament went up mountains or into the skies to speak to Yahweh they were actually taken up by the aliens in a UFO to be given certain instructions. Yahweh is, in fact, the person who spoke to Rael whose original name was Claude Vorilhorn. He assumed the name Rael which means Messenger. Eventually he becomes the last prophet – the one who succeeded Muhammad – who had a virgin birth! Yup, Claude was born of artificial insemination given to his mother by Yahweh. Claude grew up without knowing his father as he was born out of wedlock, in reality. You don’t question the reality in religion, however.

The second book, Extra-Terrestrials Took me to their Planet, is a kind of Bible for Rael’s followers. Some of the instructions in that Bible are based on scientific and humanitarian principles and hence are good. Some are quite outlandish like interpreting self-fulfilment as doing whatever you wish to do so long as you don’t harm others. You can mate with any person if you like provided the other person also likes it irrespective of the gender. Rael himself was a man with a strong libido and had quite a few women in his life. I was reminded of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in which Aisha, the most beloved wife of the Prophet, teases the man of god saying that he was shrewd enough to have invented a god who danced to his tunes. Rael has no god, however. Yahweh is just another man albeit belonging to an advanced planet where life is eternal for chosen people.  In that eternity live Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, the Old Testament prophets, and so on having been brought alive to eternity using scientific cloning from their cells collected from the earth at relevant times. Well, the ETs were monitoring everything right from the first couple on the earth. They are monitoring us too with the help of a super computer which records all our deeds. Our final retribution is awaiting us there on that planet of our creators.

In that extra-terrestrial paradise, there are beautiful women too awaiting the men to pleasure them in whatever way they choose. Those women are robots, however, though beautiful and lifelike and also belonging to different races of your choice. There seem to be no women, however, among the eternal heroes in Rael’s extra-terrestrial Paradise: no women of the stature of Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and of course Rael who will join them eventually.

The final book in the trilogy, Let’s Welcome the Extra-Terrestrials, Rael clarifies certain doubts raised by his followers as well as critics. This book also contains the testimonials of some of his prominent followers. The book is an attempt to get more followers who will contribute to the construction of a gigantic “embassy” on the earth for the ETs. You have to contribute one per cent of your income towards the cause.  So it is just like any other religion: a massive swindle! With a salacious paradise on a planet that’s not so far away. And its time is at hand too: the Apocalypse is imminent.

 

Rael

I suppressed my laughter many times as I read the book. I found it funny, very funny, much more funny than all the religions I am familiar with so far. I imagine Rael laughing all the way to the bank though he was born to an impecunious woman in a remote town in France and couldn’t complete even basic schooling. He knows the tricks of his trade, however.