Ten years ago, I enveloped myself in a glittering, gleaming cloak and sat for two separate four-hour nighttime shifts in a glass box in the lobby area of what was then the Standard Hollywood Hotel. The glass box was one of the hotel’s big gimmicks — something like a human-sized display case above the reception desk, where hired folks could pose, draw, and even sleep while guests checked in below. In my case, I was in there to study the Unarius Academy of Science, a modern metaphysical school established in the 1950s that not only believes in psychic powers but also holds that everyone has the capacity to develop extrasensory capabilities as tools for creativity. The glass-box performance-art installation was part of a larger photo exhibit about Unarius on display at the hotel. It was facilitated by Jodi Wille, a publisher, curator, and film director whose full-length documentary Welcome Space Brothers is out now and goes into detail about the Unariuns (not “Unarians”).

The glass box was configured as a visual attraction in itself as well as an immersive realm full of raw material for those who had the privilege to sift through the matter and translate it into new material forms, including me. I watched Unarius videos, read Unarius books and pamphlets, made Unarius-inspired art, and wrote about my experience in a journal while people wheeled their suitcases back and forth from the check-in area below me. The golden cape I wore was among the Unariuns’ original costumes, perhaps from one of their pageants for Uriel. Or maybe it came from one of their impromptu “psychodramas” that tapped into past lives to facilitate healing? Or it could have appeared in one of their low-budget outsider films with titles such as Rainbow Bridge to the Inner Worlds, Roots of the Earthman, or Journey Through the Crystal Mountain Cities. Whatever the case, the resplendent mantle was now firmly on my shoulders, and my only mission was to interact with all the stuff around me in order to write and make art.

So what is the Unarius Academy of Science? The name is an acronym for “Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science.” It’s a unique spiritual nonprofit foundation established in 1954 by Ernest Norman and his wife Ruth. When Ernest died in 1971, Ruth, a.k.a. Uriel from the planet Aries, became the organization’s leader, until she herself left this earth in 1993. Under Uriel’s leadership, Unarius produced 80 television programs that beamed across the airwaves of roughly 30 national public-access stations in the 1980s and beyond. From churning out mind-blowing public-access TV shows to a variety of UFO-themed paintings, music, books, and other ephemera, the Unariuns continue to promote the study of extraterrestrial intelligence, reincarnation, and free energy, with a fundamental purpose of the channeling of alien beings for inspiration.

And inspired I was. Being in that glass box was not suffocating or constrictive. Instead, it felt expansive, magical, surreal, and a liminal place if there ever was one. I was free-floating in a sea of mind-blowing matter, armed with my own supply of glitter pens and washi tape to document it all. I tried not to look out at the people in the lobby, but after I sat cross-legged meditating for about 20 minutes just to break up the creative work and alleviate my writer’s cramp, I opened my eyes and caught some tall dudes leaning on their luggage staring at me. It was the only moment I felt self-conscious. Oh, and when I briefly posted about my experience on social media, some guy whose name I don’t remember called me a cult follower and unfriended me.

Now, I am not a trained visual artist by any means. I was always allergic to the concept of art school and, from a young age, I insisted I remain self-taught. My work reflects this. But in the case of Unarius, I think my autodidactic approach fits in mighty well with their idea that we can all develop psychic skills and utilize them in order to foster and develop artistic abilities. I will admit, I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off if I hadn’t been freely taking the absolute upper limits of my prescribed dosage of amphetamine salts at the time. Otherwise, there would have been no other way for me to sit still for that long to deliver the kind of output that I did. The stuff may not necessarily be great, I’ll admit, but there was a lot of it. And from what I’ve learned about the Unariuns, the value is not necessarily in the quality of the art, but in the process of making it.

Watch the trailer for Welcome Space Brothers below.

A note on sources: All words are mine, interwoven from two rescued articles from LA Weekly and VICE. © Tanja M. Laden