extraordinary%20encounters

36 Avinash
not suffer from mental illness. Higdon did
not seek to exploit his alleged experience and
soon returned to private life. University of
Wyoming psychologist and ufologist R. Leo
Sprinkle, who investigated the incident,
judged Higdon sincere, even if it had proved
impossible to establish the “validity of the
UFO experience” (Sprinkle, 1979).
Further Reading
Gansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980.
Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFO
Abductees. New York: Walker and Company.
Sprinkle, R. Leo, 1979. “Investigation of the Alleged
UFO Experience of Carl Higdon.” In Richard F.
Haines, ed. UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral
Scientist, 225–357. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
Press.
Avinash
On March 3, 1986, an extraterrestrial spirit
entered the body of a man identified only as
John. Till then, John, a channeler from Bellevue,
Washington, had been communicating
with another entity, Elihu. However, on this
date the space being Avinash took control of
John’s consciousness. Soon thereafter, Avinash
moved to Hawaii with another walk-in (a person
under the control of a spirit or other-intelligence
that has claimed his or her body), a
woman named Alezsha. In due course, a third
walk-in, Ashtridia, joined them. Avinash,
however, did the channeling, teaching a doctrine
that said essentially that conscious could
affect reality; thus, both personal and societal
reality can be altered if one rearranges one’s
perceptions.
Overseen by an immense extradimensional
spaceship, the three moved to the popular
New Age community, Sedona, Arizona, where
Avinash met Arthea, and the two became a
couple. They were brought together, they believed,
by divine guidance. The walk-in group
expanded to a dozen members in 1987, but as
most members eventually moved away, only
three remained by the end of the year. Those
three, Avinash, Arthea, and Alana, began to
host new occupying entities that would manifest
for a time, then depart. While the entities
occupied them, the humans would take on
their names. Other members who later came
into the group, now calling itself Extraterrestrial
Earth Mission, experienced the same (to
outsiders) bewildering change of names and
identities.
Extraterrestrial Earth Mission became an
international movement. Outside the United
States, it was particularly successful in Australia.
The organization’s headquarters are
now in Hawaii.
See Also: Walk-ins
Further Reading
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American
Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.
Ayala
Ayala is a deva, a divine energy, who claims
to re p resent the animal kingdom and, beyond
that, “All That Is.” She appeared first
on Fe b ru a ry 2, 1994, to two Sedona, Arizona,
New Age women, both of them channelers.
Su b s e q u e n t l y, she directed other
d e vas, including Sh i va and Gaia, who communicated
psychically on the subject of
human-animal re l a t i o n s .
Ayala made her presence known when two
psychics, Toraya (Carly) Ayres and a woman
identified only as Sarafina, happened to be engaged
in a discussion of nature spirits. Suddenly,
Sarafina started shivering and breathing
oddly. Then she lapsed into a trance, during
which she voiced animal-like sounds. Soon
Ayala was speaking through her, proposing
that she and the two women work together on
a project. The project required Ayres to be at
her computer at three o’clock each afternoon
to write down the messages as they came
forth. When Ayres protested that this was not
a good time for her in terms of her job responsibilities,
Ayala insisted that that was the
only time the communication could be effected,
owing to the vagaries of planetary vibrations.
She said, “We will meet you in your
dreamtime, and you will be more aware of
what your role is in the inter-planetary con-