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Archived From May 20, 2006
The drive from Los Angeles to El Cajon doesn't take more than two hours, excluding traffic. Although the scenery along the way is generally bleak, as it is on most stretches of the I-5, there is something meditative about driving along the Pacific Ocean. Once you hit El Cajon, a town which can be most flatteringly described as "nestled in the San Diego foothills," you may be put off by its monochromatic wash of strip malls, its half-abandoned downtown, or the unremitting hum of the freeway. Do not be forsaken, however, because you have come here for a reason. You don't know what to expect, but you have come to visit the Unarian Academy of Sciences, right here in inauspicious El Cajon.
Unarius has been quietly running its visitor's center on this arbitrary stretch of suburbia for years. Though wedged between a Salvation Army thrift store and a gas station, the building is far from unassuming. It's bedecked by a massive mural depicting the sunken city of Atlantis flanked by shining UFOs; a large display window containing a costumed dummy of the inventor Nikola Tesla faces the otherwise anonymous street. Residents of El Cajon walk placidly by, clearly accustomed to Tesla's presence. You, however, are not. You look him in the eyes, which are hand-painted a crystalline blue, and wonder what he could possibly be doing here, a stone's throw from San Diego.
Pushing open the oak doors and stepping inside the Unarian Academy of Sciences doesn't particularly explain the maligned Polish inventor's role in the whole affair. It does, however, lead you to a visual assault of plastic flowers, Roman statuary, semi-functional dioramas, and an overwhelming amount of cultish marginalia. A diorama of "Earth's Future City" lurks by the entryway; a triumph of hot glue and kaleidoscopic plastic beads, it gathers dust under a sign reading "Welcome Space Brothers." The model supposedly represents what cities will look like on Earth once we receive enlightenment from extraterrestrials. If you ask an employee to turn it on for you, Christmas lights embedded in the plastic structure flicker to mild effect.
Let's rewind, though. Why are you here, gaping at this electric ornament? Perhaps your curiosity was piqued after you caught a sci-fi-chedlic Unarius cable access program on afternoon television. Maybe you somehow ran across a brochure advertising the "Infinite Concept of Cosmic Creation," or any of the other series of books written by the Academy's founder, Ernest L. Norman. You might be someone interested in eccentric Americana, New-Age philosophy, flying saucers, or you might just have wandered in off of the street. You might, like myself, be an unemployed science writer with not much else to do.
Who knows, you're here now, and Carol Robinson of the Unarian Academy -- who signs her emails "In Light, Carol Robinson" -- is walking up to you with a UFO pin on her lapel, and you're going to have to pretend to buy it.
Not that pretending to buy it is going to be a difficult thing to do. Unarius, fortunately, has something in its catalogue for almost everyone; if you're not particularly interested in the 32 planets which comprise the Intergalactic Conclave of Eternal Light (represented in a "star map" made of ping-pong balls and glitter), you might appreciate learning about the lost civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis, or of the "truth about Mars." Do you believe in past lives? Unarius proudly advertises past-life therapy as one of its myriad services, and has published autobiographies of both Jesus and Napoleon written by their present incarnations. If you don't buy that, then the paintings flocking the El Cajon visitor's center, many painted by students channeling the higher mental energies of Leonardo DaVinci, might interest you.
In fact, almost everything at the visitor's center is the product of mental channeling; all of the 90 self-published books and monographs, as well as the countless video programs and impossibly psychedelic paintings, are said to come from direct mental contact with advanced intelligent beings presently living in extraterrestrial civilizations. Unarius qualifies all of its claims by citing as "scientific" evidence these mental transmissions. Turns out, it seems, that aliens are channeling the minds of middle-aged Southern Californian women in turquoise sweat suits. And it turns out, in a pure coincidence, that aliens are way into rainbows, crystals, and tiaras.
I am interested in people who give themselves the appelation of "scientists" in their practice of a discipline outside of the traditional boundaries of Science. Whether or not they know it, they are the only ones truly exploring the porous nature of the line between the sciences and everything else: the arts, the perverse, the literary, the religious. The women at the Unarian Academy of Science are such people. Their crystal rainbow aesthetic, furthermore, is a pure articulation of how misunderstanding the original gestures of science inevitably leads to an entanglement in art. Even the channeled DaVincis, in their folly, are incredible monuments of outsider art.
Incidentally, how do you know when you are channeling a higher mental energy? If the tenets of Unarian science rely so profoundly on these transmissions straight from the mouths of the aliens themselves, then there must be a way of measuring, quantifying, the process. If you ask Carol Robinson, whose eyes gleam a crystal blue, she may point you to the water coolers dotted around the room.
"You get thirsty," she says.
<< | Posted on May 20, 2006 at 12:00 AM | >>
Comments (5):
http://www.pyracantha.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2006/03/26
just a taste of the mystery of robert bearns
Posted by adam Forkner @ May 20, 2006 9:53 AM
What Forkner said.
Did you stay the night?
And then what happened?
Yum! Good Science!
Posted by Richard Jensen @ May 20, 2006 7:40 PM
I'm new to this- but I have to ask you if you know anything about the Japanese guy who took all these pictures of "crystalized" water- he talks to bottles of water, tells them they are beautiful- they make gorgeous iradescent crystals, but if he says "ugly" or "I hate you" the water, uh, doesn't make crystals...it's quite joyful reading, but I suppose makes a mockery of scientific method, there's no indication that these experiments are in any way repeatable, and not purely subjective...
Posted by arrington @ June 21, 2006 9:18 PM
dude
this is so fucking awesome. i have wanted to see and go there and vibe on the crunk Lemuria styrofoam vibes of eternal healing universal light for so long. this is a rad entry. i want more pictures more stories! yeah........next up: FIND ROBERT BEARNS AND RON DEXTER...
Posted by adam Forkner @ May 20, 2006 9:50 AM