Universe People or Cosmic People of Light Powers (Czech: Vesmírní lidé sil světla) is a Czech and Slovak new religious movement founded in the 1990s and centered around Ivo A. Benda. Their belief system is based upon the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations communicating with Benda and other contactees since October 1997 telepathically and later even by direct personal contact. They are considered to be the most distinctive UFO religion in the Czech Republic.
Following the mass suicide of the members of the cult Heaven's Gate in 1997, the Universe People attracted the attention of Czech media as a group with similar ideology and potential to commit similar acts. The danger of this development has diminished in later years (2004). On several occasions, the group also managed to appear in the Czech and Slovak mass media.
Read more about Universe People: History, Ideology, Opponents and Cultural Impact
Famous quotes containing the words universe and/or people:
“In his comprehensive delight in all experience Dickens resembles Walt Whitman, but he was innocent of that nebulous transcendentalism that blurred Whitman’s universe into vast misty panoramas and left him, for all his huge democratic vistas, unable to tell a story or paint a single concrete human being.”
—Edgar Johnson (1912–1990)
“Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)