May 13, 1993
by Lawrence Osborne for San Diego Reader
“New Agers tell us the truth about UFOs“
The Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard in San Diego. A four-day UFO conference that attracted various fringe sects and groups, including Morningland. The writer records his daily encounters in an article here. Excerpts below feature his encounter with Sri Donato.
Friday
“I thought I might have wandered into a coven of esoterica-minded bikers or a gathering of faith healers from the low-rent suburbs. In the center of the conference area, where the various exhibitors and conferencees had set up their stalls, a life-size cut-out of Einstein stood under a cluster of small palms, and around this focal hub stood a disorientating array of individuals. Behind a large white shrine equipped with a china Buddha, green candles, and bowls of apples, two icy blonde priestesses with gold headbands — Gopi Saravati of Morningland and her colleague — stood ready to give direct transmission from the Master Sri Donato, which would protect from alien abductions.”
Monday
“One person I do want to talk to before I leave is Sri Donato of the local spiritual organization Morningland, whose altar had attracted my eye on the First day. The scribes at Morningland claim they can prevent Aliens abducting — or, as they put it, “harvesting” — you. Sri Donato gave a curious lecture called “Where and How the Aliens Penetrate the Dreamline,” about aliens getting into our dreams and causing havoc there.
According to a national survey,” she says, “one out of 50 persons in this country has been abducted by aliens, with the total number of abductees currently standing at about five million. Group therapy is now available for people who have undergone traumatic encounters at the hands of an alien force, which seems to have the power to enter our homes and our minds, taking the terrified on lone journeys into space and experimenting on their bodies in any fashion that they choose. These Alien Harvesters are violating Divine Law…. They take your body, stun your mind, wipe out your memory, and drop you with the mutilated cattle — except that your mutilation is in the form of confusion, nightmares, fears, phobias, leaving you feeling helpless. That’s the huge collective experience which we address: These Harvesters are really the ultimate thieves, a dark, demonic force. My abductions,” she says, “began when I was seven…”
L. Osborne writes, “Sri Donato’s harvesters are really just medieval demons (who, if you remember, also had the power to enter people’s dreams), and her “abducted” children are just herself. By now, it’s a familiar, sad litany. It’s time, finally, to leave. As I do so, I feel like physically taking a shower. Fifty years ago, W.H. Auden wrote, imagining the future in his Christmas Oratorio: “Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions — feelings in the solar plexus induced by undernourishment.”
Sri Patricia’s photo above is taken from a 1977 video owned by Brent B., former member.
