MONTREAL -- Rael, the spiritual guru behind the world's first alleged human clone, says his Quebec-based cult is already turning to the next chapter in the quest for human immortality -- deathbed cloning.

To the white-robed leader of the Raelians, the fringe movement associated with the cloning announcement, baby Eve is only the start.

The Raelians also want to develop a process that would allow the dying to create full-grown reproductions of themselves in a few hours, offering an eleventh-hour chance to live forever.

"When you are about to die, then you can have an adult copy of yourself," Rael said from Florida yesterday. "By transferring yourself into a new body, you have eternal life for a different body."

People would accomplish the feat through something called "Accelerated Growth Process," he told CTV News.

"If we take a cell from your body and we make a clone of you, you need nine months to have a baby, then you need 15 to 18 years to have an adult person," said Rael, whose real name is Claude Vorilhon. "With Accelerated Growth Process, AGP, you can have an adult copy of yourself in a few hours."

The comment helps explain why the scientific community is both nervous and skeptical about the group's controversial claims.

The Raelians, who consider science a new religion, believe extraterrestrials created human beings by cloning themselves. The birth of a baby clone fits into their core belief that cloning is the ticket to immortality.

"We don't believe in God. We don't believe in soul. And cloning a human being is proof that there is no soul and that we can create life in a laboratory," Rael said.

He called yesterday "the most beautiful day in the history of humanity," and dismissed the concerns of scientists who call the move reckless and unethical.

Similar concerns were raised surrounding the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978, he said. Now 200,000 children have been born through in vitro fertilization.

"You cannot stop science -- there are always scientists who are against progress," he said. "By doing [cloning], we'll perfect it."

French-born Rael claims to have been conceived Dec. 25, 1945, by a French mother and an alien. However, Alain Bouchard, a Laval University professor who has monitored the Raelians for 15 years, says that Rael's father is believed to have been a Jewish refugee who was hidden by Rael's mother in France during the Second World War.

Rael never knew his father, Prof. Bouchard said. But now both Rael and his mother have come to believe his father was an alien.