The couple discussed numerous details about their alleged past lives and spiritual visits to other planets, forming a mythology from these accounts.

After the extraterrestrials failed to appear, Norman said that trauma she had suffered in a past life had caused her to make an inaccurate prediction.

Undaunted, she rented a building for Unarius' meetings and sought publicity for the movement, claiming to have united the Earth with an interplanetary confederation.

[3][4] In the 1940s, she enrolled at the Church of Religious Science, where she studied New Thought under Ernest Holmes, and was separately introduced to psychic healing in that decade.

[6] In 1954, at a psychic event in California, Ruth was introduced to Ernest Norman, who told her that in a past life she had been the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh and had protected Moses.

[7] Members of the organization they later established, the Unarius Academy of Science, affirm that Ernest and Ruth married on the day they met,[8] and the group celebrates their anniversary as February 14, 1954.

[2][18] Their group developed a mythology from the accounts that Ernest and Ruth gave of these lives,[8][19] including tales from their past incarnations in Atlantis and Lemuria.

Some of their stories were similar to the plots of contemporary books and films, prompting Tumminia to cast their beliefs as a pastiche or bricolage of the surrounding culture.

[20] Ernest and Ruth promoted millennialist teachings, holding that higher beings were to transform the Earth and bring devotees to a new level of existence; the couple held that this growth would allow people to travel through space.

[8][19] After Ernest died, Spiegel affirmed Ruth's nascent belief that she was an archangel named Uriel from the "fourth dimension".

[27] The American journalist Alexander S. Heard argues that Tesla's rumored interests in death rays and free energy drew the group to him.

[25] In November 1974, assisted by some of her students, Norman purchased a 67-acre (0.27 km2) property near Jamul, California, to serve as a landing site for extraterrestrials, whom she referred to as the "Space Brothers".

[34] These beings were to restore the lost teachings of Atlantis to the Earth, and their revelations were to free humanity from crime and disease, ushering in an era of learning.

[22][b] She believed that this information would be imparted by a thousand extraterrestrial scientists, who would also bring advances in technology, among which she specified crystal computers, to Earth.

[37] Norman led the group in classes to teach them how to relive the event that had culminated in Isis' assassination and took them to the expected landing site to stir their memories.

[39][40] She purported to be the "Spirit of Beauty" and the "Goddess of Love"; in this capacity, she claimed complete knowledge of truth and the ability to heal.

Unarius' members occasionally recalled crimes that they had committed in past lives, including times they harmed incarnations of Ruth Norman.

[18] The students sometimes acted out and filmed scenes from their previous incarnations, an experience that participants found therapeutic; they cited this benefit as proof that the events were real.

[45] In March 1976, Norman publicly wagered $4,000 with the British gambling firm Ladbrokes that extraterrestrials would land on Earth within one year, a prediction which attracted media attention.

[48] After losing the wager, Norman changed the expected landing date to 2001; she taught that the close of the 20th century coincided with the beginning of a new cycle which would bring great benefits to humanity.

[2] In the mid-to-late 1980s, Unarius "mini documentaries" featuring "Uriel" aired as far east as the New York City region, in Westchester County (for one), on public access television.

[59] The group developed a set of six core sacred narratives about the past lives of its founders, describing key events on Earth and other planets.

These myths featured tales of romance, war, and scientific advances in the Aries and Orion constellations and in ancient civilizations on Earth.

[60] Kirkpatrick and Tumminia state that the Unarian canon appears to be incoherent to outsiders, but is appreciated as a cohesive body of literature by the group's members.

[61] Norman wore a variety of brightly colored, elaborate costumes and was often photographed by media while wearing royal-style gowns and wigs and holding a scepter.

[31] Her assistants helped shepherd her media image;[57] Kirkpatrick and Tumminia speculate that her charisma was primarily responsible for gaining publicity for the group.

In an attempt to help her recover, students used past-life regression to recall interactions with her, and some became very emotional after experiencing memories of events in which they had rejected and hurt her.

Norman lost most of her hearing[73] and experienced chronic pain;[74] she was admitted to a hospital in December 1989,[75] but by the summer she was well enough to be present at events.

[84] After Norman's death, public opinion of her organization was strongly influenced by the 1997 mass suicide of Heaven's Gate, a UFO religion whose members occupied a house within 50 miles (80 km) of the Unarius Academy of Science.