The Aetherius Society is an organisation that has managed to be both remarkable and unremarkable. It is remarkable for its longevity. Started in Britain in the mid 1950s, along with FSR, it is the only surviving, active entity from that period of British UFOlogy.

And yet the Society remains unremarkable in its profile and in its impact on our lives. The organisation has always been there, never making much fuss, and always regarded as part of the lunatic fringe of UFOlogy because they believe in aliens. Indeed.

Before I approached them for this interview, I knew a little about them but I didn’t know them. I had opinions formed by slanted beliefs and the biased writings of others which could essentially be summarised in a simple sentence; they were nutters. How and why they were nutters I wasn’t quite sure, although I knew it involved chanting and strange practices, and as this is a magazine that is concerned with the realities of extraterrestrial life, then their side of it, the borderline cult fringe element, wasn’t of any real concern.

What I discovered made an impression upon me. To begin with, they aren’t even remotely a cult; they are a respectable religion with as much legitimacy as any other. And above all for the readers of this magazine, they actually have some relevance.  

Their lynchpin, now deceased, was a gentleman called George King. Born in Shropshire in 1919, there was a strong line of pyschic mediumship running through the maternal side of his family that seemed to also touch upon him, and as a child, he allegedly discovered the ability to heal through the radiation of spiritual power.

He had a distinguished war record and afterwards took a strong interest in yoga in which he invested long hours of practice. He consequently reached a very high level of ability and gradually began to attract a small cricle of other devotees and people with a strong spiritual bent who were looking for an alterntive direction.

On a Saturday morning as the story goes, in 1954 while drying some dishes, he heard a loud voice say: "Prepare yourself! You are to become the Voice of Interplanetary Parliament."

Soon after, he channelled the first message transmission that came to him from an advanced spiritual being living on Venus called Aetherius. In order to receive these messages, King had to enter what he described as a "positive" form of trance as opposed to the "negative" form used by many spiritualist mediums. The "positive" form according to King was the result of intense effort and concentration and was based upon techniques drawn from advanced branches of yoga that enabled him to concentrate on one of the psychic centres or chakras connected to the spine and upon the telepathic impulses radiated by his communicators.

And so the Aetherius Society was born. The foundations of the Society were laid upon these channellings that Dr King received from Aetherius and others, many conducted in a public forum at the Caxton Hall in London. A deep and far reaching spiritual philosphy grew out of these early beginnings and remains today. Helping others is the basis of their existence and there isn’t a trace of evil or obfuscation about them. Inevitably, because Dr King was held in very high regard, there were suspicions that some had elevated him to a deity, which they hadn’t, and doubts existed among the more cynical about a modern day human being assuming the same kind of role that Jesus and other well known historical figures occupied, which he never claimed to do.

You can form you own opinion about them from reading what Richard Lawrence their European Executive Secretary has to say in this interview. Personally, I think they have something to offer the more spiritually inclined amongst you but that is for you to decide. If I have one criticism, it was the occasional note of defensiveness that emerged from Richard when critical questions were posed. He is obviously a very experienced media individual and the Society have been the subject of mockery on many occasions, so I suspect he was being wary.

I want to thank them for their cooperation both with the interview and for the pictures that accompany it. Alien Worlds Magazine was extended a privilege not offered to many.

You appear to have been around for a very long time!

The Society was founded in 1955. I was lucky enough to know Dr. George King very well and wrote his last two books with him. He was actually contacted by the Master Aetherius, as we call him, in 1954. When people ask when the Society was founded as an organisation, we always say 1955.

Essentially and fundamentally you are a spiritual organisation based on the practice of yoga?

Yes, to some degree. The real essence of what we are is a UFO contactee organisation, as they used to call them.

The question I wanted to ask was, your guiding principle is to help and assist others and you have this deep spiritual element to you; why would somebody who is inclined to help others and is who perhaps not necessarily divorced from the materialistic world but is not necessarily motivated by it either, why would they come to you as opposed to choosing some other way?

Obviously I am biased but there are a couple of reasons I’ll give, otherwise I’d be somewhere else. One is, we have the greatest spiritual teachings available in the world today, but I want to stress; not the only. We never present ourselves as the one and only way as several other religious organisations do, but I do believe the finest calibre of teaching particularly in this modern age, the New Age.

And secondly, because I believe you can do more good for Society through the Aetherius Society than any other spiritual organisation in the world today. I stress again, not the only though; there are many other spiritual organisations doing great things for Humanity. The reason being in our case is because we believe we are cooperating directly with beings from other worlds who to us are virtual Gods. That is how I would summarise the answer to your question.

So somebody who would be interested in the Society would also have a belief in extraterrestrial life?

They would. They may not come to us initially for that reason. People come to us for a whole variety of reasons. Sometimes its for our healing work, sometimes its our spiritual development programmes which as well as having extraterrestrial transmissions, also have ancient yogic wisdom, because Dr. George King was a Master of yoga in his own right and was contacted for that reason in our view. They might come because they are interested in the truth about UFOs although not so much the government files and the cover ups and some of the areas I’m sure you specialise in in your magazine, but more the message.

Those would be the reasons that would bring people to us, I would think.

You’ve mentioned UFOs a couple of times already but the fact is you are quite divorced from the nuts and bolts side of it.

We are. We’ve tried to cooperate with people on that side of it but sometimes they don’t like our certainty and the fact that we feel and believe we have the answers to questions that perhaps some of them would rather were not answered. There are some people who might feel it almost puts them out of business to have these questions answered.

I have a feeling you have someone or an organisation in mind when you say that.

Well no, it’s just experience. I’ve spoken to some organisations certainly, and by the way I want to stress this does not apply to all nuts and bolts people by a long way. We have cooperated with a number of people like that and I myself was the first person to bring UFO related CIA papers back into this country in 1980, which people like Timothy Good and others picked up on later.

So we’ve worked with people like that and other UFO specialists over the years very harmoniously. We applaud their work and for calling for the Truth about UFOs.

I think though that the Aetherius Society has an unparalleled record even in that area in this country. Because in 1958, fifty years ago, Dr. King arranged a rally in Trafalgar Square and stated that there was information in the Ministry of Defence that was being withheld and it was an extremely unpopular and extremely controversial thing to do in 1958. Now it’s easy, frankly. Nobody believes the government very much on anything nowadays.

But I even remember in the late 70s and early 80s lecturing around the country and other parts of the world about government cover ups and so on when it was still a very controversial thing to say. People thought you were paranoid and so forth for even suggesting it.

I think whatever people think of Dr George King they should give him and the Aetherius Society credit for being the most long standing campaigners, certainly in Britain and maybe even the world, for the release of papers by the MoD and claiming even back in the mid 50s that there was a cover up.

I remember speaking to Nick Pope on his first day in the office on the UFO desk at the MoD, before he was known at all, because we’d been in touch with that office - Secretariat air 2 - in the 70s and early 80s and I helped to write a speech for Lord Kimberley for a House of Lords debate on UFOs. Nick did not believe in UFOs and he did not believe that there were any papers of relevance in the Ministry. I said, “You’ll think differently after a little bit of time in that job”.

A sceptic, who’s sceptical about people like me for example, should also be very sceptical of the MoD who have a proven track record of lying on this subject. They denied having papers for a long while. A lot of sceptics are selective about their scepticism.

You’ve alluded to some of your practices which I would like to go into in more detail but before I do I want to mention the giggle factor. Why do you think this exists?

Are you relating this just to the Aetherius Society of to UFOlogists in general?

Both.

Even to your magazine?

Yes, I think so. If people ask me what my magazine is about, I am careful to phrase the answer and try and couch it in a way that won’t have people laughing at me.

Can I be honest with you? I think that’s overly timid of you if I may say. They had a good old laugh at Alexander Bell when he invented the telephone and I don’t think we need to apologise for this or need to be nervous. Most polls do show that people do believe in UFOs, they do believe in life on other planets, and if people want to giggle then that is their problem and it is an extremely immature response to an extremely important subject. To address truth in that manner is very childish I think because they don’t know that it’s untrue, they don’t know that there aren’t UFOs, they don’t know that Dr. King isn’t a contactee, so just to laugh at it is extremely unproductive actually.

Can you explain the structure of the Society?

Yes, it’s fairly complex. When Dr. King was alive, he was in charge. He was the President of the Society. Even then though we had an international board of directors of which I was one and so he was answerable to that board but we obviously respected him, believed he was a genuine Master and someone in contact with beings from other worlds and we were very happy to defer to his wisdom. There was no President to replace him and there is no one in the Aetherius Society now who claims contact with extraterrestrial intelligences as he did. So what we have is a fairly complex structure internationally which is basically divided into three sections.

One is what you have referred to as the religious section and that is based very much from a structural point of view on the Christian Church. In other words there are bishops, priests, ministers, assistant ministers, what you might call lay ministers, and that’s in quite a few countries through out the world.

We have an international board of directors for the administrative structure and there are some committees and various branches and so forth. The third plank is what we call our missions and these are operations which are done in direct cooperation as we claim with beings from other worlds to help save the planet; ecologically, the Human race, and the Mother earth as a living being. Some people are involved in all three elements, some just involved with one and so on; it depends.
 
There are a number of people around the world, probably less than twenty actually, who are on one or more of those three governing bodies. On top of that, the Society falls into two jurisdictions which are basically America and Europe, but we work very, very closely together. In America there is somebody called Brian Keneipp who has the same position I have in the Society which is Executive Secretary and we’re in touch a lot, several times a week quite often.

In Africa, where we probably have more members than anywhere else, that would come under us here in London. But in New Zealand where we’re very active and also Australia - that comes under the American jurisdiction. We have one journal called The Cosmic Voice which is edited and approved internationally. We have a monthly E newsletter sent by email which again is edited internationally.

Where’s the power base. Do people still point to England as the base of the Society?

No, there is equal division between the European jurisdiction which is run from here, London, and the American jurisdiction which is run from LA. We strive hard, that’s LA and London, to keep it as one Society because with so many religious and spiritual organisations, when a powerful leader passes on, you get schisms and divisions and we’ve worked very hard to avoid that, and its eleven years since Dr. King passed on. It’s not easy in any organisation actually of any kind where there are very strongly held views but so far so good.

Dr King was actually a brilliant administrator and he worked very hard to keep people together and to have some internal structures that people have to hold to. It’s all voluntary so they can take it or leave it but if they are part of it, then there are certain standards that we follow.

You don’t actively or aggressively recruit, do you?

No. There are cults out there and sometimes we have wrongly been called a cult. I say “wrongly” because the word “cult” has very derogatory meanings to it and there have been some very dodgy organisations in the past as I’m sure you know. We are not that kind of organisation. In fact the Cult Information centre came out and confirmed that we are not. We avoid any kind of questionable recruiting method at all.

We have tried to make ourselves as well known as we possibly can with our limited funds and welcome an opportunity like this and hope that this interview will go out straight, so that people can form their own opinions. It is our task, if you do believe you are getting great teachings from extraterrestrial beings, to try and share that with as many people as possible so that they can come to their own conclusions. If they want to have a giggle then that’s their problem but if they want to benefit from it then that’s their good luck.

I couldn’t help catching your remark there that you hoped this interview goes out straight. Have you been victims of mockery?

I don’t use the word “victim” because I think it has all the wrong connotations but in the spirit of your question, the answer is undoubtedly yes. We’ve been abused and only this week I turned down an interview actually with Radio 4 because they were not willing to allow me to respond to any comments made about us live. In other words they wanted to do a pre recorded interview with me then edit it down and then put it before three so called experts to comment on.

So we’ve learned not to do things like that. It doesn’t have to be a government inspired D Notice; it can just be a general conditioning. But having said that, I do want to qualify what I just said. Things have improved immensely. We very rarely do pre recorded interviews that can be edited for the reasons I have just explained but we are very happy to appear live. I wouldn’t mind appearing with anybody live. They are fully entitled to their opinions and can say whatever they like; that’s fine by me if I’ve got a fair opportunity to respond.   

And I don’t think this is just the Aetherius Society by the way. I think lots and lots of people would say they are in that boat with the media generally, particularly television and radio.

I want to add though we have seen a fantastic improvement. I do a lot of radio shows not only in this country. I do George Noory which I’m sure you know which is excellent. Goes out to what, 11 or 12 million people and we get a fantastic response. Very fair. I’ve done TalkSport and had some great interviews there live too. I’ve done up to four hour phone-in shows, very good, very positive and on the whole I would say over 90% of the callers I get now are anything from sympathetic to reasonable. Whereas there was a time when it would be the other way round, almost, going back twenty years.

So I’ve seen a great change and I think people respect the fact that the Aetherius Society is still there and that we don’t pretend to be something that we’re not. We come right out and say what we believe and people can take it or leave it and we’ve been going for over fifty years. According to a company called Inform who do work for the Home Office, we have the lowest turnover of any new religious movement. In other words, people who join us are less likely to leave us, having joined, then any other organisation because they really find it rewarding.

In the light of those comments, do you think you are benefiting from a cultural shift through an increase in interest in the New Age?

I think these days there is a lot of frustration with the daily grind of life and the pressures and stress. The UK in 2008 is a very different place to the way it was in 1955, in some ways a safer place, but individually I feel people are under more stress.

Undoubtedly, we are benefiting from a cultural shift and people are much more open-minded now. For example during the recent Sun newspaper coverage of UFOs recently, I was doing a radio show about it and I noticed the way it was covered on the television by newspaper reviewers and they didn’t dismiss it. One reviewer was asked, “Do you believe in all this sort of thing?” and they said, “Of course.”

I’ve mentioned the opinion polls and how the majority of people now know there is life on other planets whereas I remember Patrick Moore saying there was definitely no life anywhere, which he doesn’t say now.

Well, he’s still not very keen.

No, but the odds and percentages are such that there is life as we know it, never mind life not as we know it. I did one radio interview on LBC actually and the other guest was Sir Martin Rees the Astronomer Royal and he was talking about how we need to open our minds to life on Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn which is something the Aetherius Society has believed in since it was founded.

So I think the ridicule factor is much lower now than it used to be. Also, I think people are moving away from the traditional religions, other than perhaps fundamentalism, which apparently is on the growth. But people are more dissatisfied with the big, more traditional religions and they are looking for explanations that tie in with New Science, with invisible matter, speeds faster than light, space, time travel, again things that the Aetherius Society have been talking about since the 1950s. So yes, people are I think quite open to these kinds of concepts and there’s been an enormous change in our direction I would say.

Is the Society secretive about any of its religious practices?

No, not about its religious practices. The only thing we are secretive about is the design of some of the apparatus we use. The reason for that is because we believe that in the wrong hands, this type of radionic equipment could be misused to do harm, and that’s the only reason. There are seminars and events that are restricted in their attendance; in other words you would have to be of a certain degree of dedication within the Aetherius Society to attend them, but anybody could attain that if they wanted to.

Pardon my ignorance but is there one practice where you actually physically climb a series of mountains?

Absolutely, we go to holy mountains. In fact this year is the 50th anniversary of one of our missions. I don’t regard that as ignorant by the way Stuart at all. Quite understandably you don’t know everything we do. There are 19 mountains in the world that we believe are holy. They aren’t the only holy mountains by the way. There are mountains like the Himalayas to give an obvious example which are obviously holy and have been for centuries. But there are 19 mountains that we regard as New Age Power Centres in that they have been charged with energy in the last century in a mission called Operation Starlight which started 50 years ago this year. We’ll be celebrating that and we’ll be climbing eleven mountains in Europe alone on one day this year, August 23rd, which is a very significant day for us.

What we refer to as pilgrimages are open to the public. They aren’t secret, they aren’t private, we gain permission where we need to from the National Trust or whoever is concerned with a particular mountain, and climb them quite openly and anybody can come. When we are on top of them we pray for world peace, we chant ancient mantras that are thousands of years old. We use New Age prayers in a practice called The Twelve Blessings which is our main religious practice which anybody can buy in written form or on tape. None of it is secret at all. In fact, the more the merrier.

Is it correct to say that the essence or one of the essences of the Society is based in Theosophy?

Not quite. What I would say is that there are parallels. I wouldn’t say we were based in Theosophy because the essence of Theosophy as I understand it is about Ascended Masters who live on this world, Bodhisattvas as they used to be known, whereas the essence of our belief is in Extraterrestrail Masters. So there is a difference in emphasis; we are more on the cosmic side.

Having said that though, we do believe that there are Ascended Masters and we do believe that Madam Blavatsky who founded Theosophy was a genuine Contact with some of those Masters. We have a great respect for Theosophy. I think the Aetherius Society in our view goes a lot further than Theosophy and is much, much more practical. But that isn’t to say that we don’t respect them and cooperate with them, because we do.

You mentioned a date in August as being very significant for you. Is July 8th. also an important day?

Absolutely. July 8th is the holiest day of our callendar and all our members around the world spend that whole day, unless they are in the public services such as the fire service where they can’t, but all those that possibly can take the whole day off work and devote it to the planet, the Mother Earth. We have tremendous reverence to the Mother Earth. Ecology has always been a major issue for Dr. King decades before it was fashionable; in the early 70s it was his motivating force and indeed in the 60s.

What is the significance of the date in August?

August 23rd is the date that this mission I mentioned to you, Operation Starlight where these 19 mountains were charged, was completed.

If I could throw this in, I think there is one thing that marks out the Aetherius Society and that is we are extremely hard working people and very, very practical. So even people who would dismiss our beliefs would have to acknowledge that we do try to live what we believe and work very hard at it.


Could you put into context the practice within the Society of yoga?

 
Dr King receiving a Cosmic Transmission

Sure. Dr. King himself was a real exponent of yoga. What the word actually means is “union” and its union with The Devine or some would say your higher self and others would say God. Whatever word you use, that is the purpose of yoga. Nowadays a lot of people think the purpose of yoga is to keep fit and have your body toned up. That isn’t why it was devised at all thousands and thousands of years ago. People argue about how old it is and it’s one of my favourite subjects and I could talk at length about it.

But it’s broken down into various branches and all of these are paths to liberation, to union with your divine self, which is within you. Some of the better known ones are Raja yoga, Jnana yoga, Kundalini yoga and Dr King practiced these very intensively just after the second world war, and when I say intensively I mean about 8 hours a day often, for 10 years, on top of various jobs that he did as well. He didn’t have his own income and he did work.

So he was a very unusual person to just even do that, especially then. I actually haven’t heard of anyone else since who claims to have done that in the West.

He then attained the goal of yoga which is a thing called Samadhi which is the highest state of meditation one can obtain, a very deep state. Because he attained it, he could be used to channel or act as a medium for communications directly from beings from other worlds. It was because he could attain this elevated state, it is quite a complex thing, a communicating intelligence can only use someone who can attain a certain level of consciousness and he could do this.

He was therefore chosen to be their primary terrestrial mental channel and since 1954 up to the day of his death, in fact in the last week of his life, he was receiving communications. These communications varied from great teachings such as my own favourite book in the whole world called The Nine Freedoms, a philosophical book about our past and future evolution, to specific instructions like to go to certain mountains which had to be charged with energy by various sources, and other missions he performed and developed. And this continued really throughout his life.

We’re very lucky in the Aetherius Society because there are quite a few religious organisations that had a leader who turned out to have feet of clay, regrettably. Ours was everything he said he was and I am in a position to know that. He was very modest, from a financial point of view he didn’t indulge himself at all, and he was very strict morally. He was married but he was celibate, a Yogi and Master. His wife was one of his greatest disciples and is still alive. He worked exceptionally hard every day, even when he was ill. He really led from the front, he was strict, he was very determined, extremely honest, very direct, he had a great sense of humour. He wasn’t particularly interested personally in publicity so he wasn’t much of a promoter.

There were a number of criticisms of Dr. King. The reason I interrupted was because you said he wasn’t much of a promoter but he did allow himself to be put on BBC TV, I think it was in the 50s; I’ve seen that footage where he was seen to be communing or receiving messages from Venusians.

It might have been the Master Aetherius himself actually.

It was a very brave thing to do but also a very public act.

I didn’t say he didn’t do any promotion, I was quite precise in what I said, I said he wasn’t much of a promoter; it wasn’t a great interest of his. But particularly in the 50s and early 60s he did appear in America to quite a considerable extent. But in the years I knew him, the 70s, 80s, and early 90s he could have really capitalised on a lot of promotional opportunities. He didn’t refuse to do them by the way because he realised it was important to get the message out, and the message was there to be given out, but he didn’t particularly enjoy it. It wasn’t his cup of tea and it wasn’t something he was particularly attracted to. He could have done much, much more than he did I think.

There are two criticisms I have in mind, one of which I think is irrelevant, but it seems to be something that is brought up, which is exactly what was Dr King’s position before he founded the Society? Some people refer to him as a former taxi driver and some refer to him as a former driver. To be perfectly honest, he could have swept the streets, it doesn’t really seem to be significant.

What’s the criticism there?

I think the criticism, which is implied, is that he went from being a taxi driver to being the focus of a religion.

OK, I won’t be disingenuous, I’ll try an answer it. Shri Krishna was a cowherd. Jesus was carpenter. Dr King never compared himself to those beings by the way, I’m just saying it. I don’t see it as criticism and I don’t know what the point is. Are they saying that a taxi driver could not be inspired by God?


To be honest with you I think that is the essence of it, yes.

Well I disagree. Let’s forget Dr King and let’s take other drivers. I think they are perfectly capable of finding enlightenment and I think to say that taxi drivers could not become enlightened is a horrendous type of intellectual snobbery.


OK. There was also some debate about the validity of some of the titles that Dr King acquired. How much truth is there in that?

Well there is no truth that they weren’t all valid! But they were not from the Queen of England. They were perfectly valid as to what they were which is all that he ever said they were. He received an order fro