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VENERABLE SEGYU CHOEPEL RINPOCHE
CARBOGEN AND ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
ROBERT OGALVIE CROMBIE (ROC) OF FINDHORN FAME
YUROK INDIANS OF THE KLAMATH RIVER AND DELTA BAY
THE NIGHT KERWIN SNORED FOREVER
THE SANCTIMONIOUS SANCTUARY CAMEL
A COYOTE DIES 1993
CHICKEN POULTRY LEE 1994
A FRIEND WITH FOOD 1999
LODESTONES 1979
ESTHER 1972
GOODBYE MY LADY LOVE 1972
TRIVIA 4/1/00
LAST EMBRACE 9/99
EXCURSIONS IN A PERAMBULATOR (GREYHOUND BUS) 11/99
SENIOR FARE 11/99
Many living beings brought this vision of mine to where I could dare to publish a few copies before submitting it to a copy editor. They one and all first loved me and I them. They were true friends who held my hand when indicated and knocked me on the head or kicked ass: Roy Dixon, JoAnne Sunshine, Chris Tong, Anne Howell, Trish and Georg, Joan Valdina, Woody Anderson and Irwin. Above all they loved me and made it a great trip.
I have spent forty years trying to understand various states of consciousness in my own body-mind. This is my attempt to portray the experiences, insights, experiments, conversations and loving exchanges that formed the shape and substance of that inquiry. In some instances, my query led to direct personal contact&emdash;at all levels of intensity, humor, and love&emdash;as apprentice, or even, as teacher. This whole realm&emdash;from material to cosmic&emdash;became a means to search for consonance or vibrational equivalents.
These are stories about some of the cosmic explorers I have met&emdash;my teachers of domains that I longed to become more intimate with. But it seems that I was without the intrinsic talent required. I was to become an understudy, a profound admirer of their poetic mastery of that tremendum. When I even so much as lightly touched upon it I was left with a longing for some more ultimate clime on which to rest my weariness in adoration. This is an introduction to those great ones&emdash;Bentov, Bird, DeRopp, Gattegno, Monroe, Naessens, Harry Roberts, and many others which you will see here through my star-struck eyes. Each of these outstanding visionary’s extraordinary experiences led them to a greater understanding of themselves and the nature of existence. Theirs was an effort to communicate, not to indoctrinate.
It is my hope that these tales of mine will enrich humanity by expanding our collective vision of our own human potential. I have experienced things that crossed the great divide between my normal sensitivities and the miraculous. Witnessing these mysteries challenged my ‘human operating system’. But I’m not sure that it was only my ‘human’ framework which was challenged. We are all on the verge of a new age of enlightenment, discovery and learning. Eternal life is not just around the corner, but celestial harmonies do abound in this tear-drenched realm. And yet current science would say we are deluded.
Our soul’s survival beyond physical death is a subject that has always intensely interested me. I found that there are many ways to develop the awareness of our inherently eternal nature. One of the earliest paths that I chose to explore was the discipline of ‘out of body’ research, or OOB.
Robert Monroe was the great modern pioneer of out of body travel with whom I worked for several years. I visited him in Virginia in the 70’s right before he began to offer Esalen-like conferences all over the west. These developed into week-long programs and progressed from there to an ongoing program that became more and more refined and sophisticated. The first four of these programs were held at the Westerbeke Ranch in Sonoma. At these very early sessions I was asked to help identify those with a special talent for this work and I was also involved in assessing the psychological and psychic aspects of the participants. If necessary, I was there to help stabilize those who experienced a difficulty during the powerful, and sometimes disorienting sessions.
Evolving from very humble beginnings&emdash;portable cassette players with cheap headphones on hotel room floors&emdash;the Monroe Institute eventually developed into a state of the art facility. Bob’s initial goal was to create a system specifically designed to enhance and promote the out of body experience for other adventurous souls. But his Institute became a magnet for all types of creative genius and kept generating new ideas. Monroe has incorporated many techniques familiar to the genre of hypnosis and has enhanced the scope of this modality with his ingenious use of sound. He developed a method of synchronizing both hemispheres of the brain using a unique combination of sound frequencies embedded at a very low volume, an ‘auditory guidance technology’. These sequences of sound patterns evoke "wholebrain" functioning. The result&emdash;Hemispheric Synchronization, or Hemi-Synch represents one of the most effective systems of altering consciousness that has been developed. These carefully engineered creations have lead many listeners to report expanded mental, physical and emotional capacities. These capabilities can then be directed as you choose.
It was Bob’s vision that inspired the Monroe Institute’s ambitious and successful program, and in his last book he fully describes their accomplishments. I recently read his magnum opus, or personal requiem eternal, Ultimate Journey. He brought the whole discipline of out of body travel to a breathtaking climax in this, his last book, where he describes the whole process in great detail. In that loving environment, under carefully controlled conditions, others were taught to develop skills that most people would never imagine. Robert Monroe successfully initiated hundreds into a process of unhooking conscious awareness from the physical dimension. Once this skill was mastered there were literally hundreds of other exciting possibilities to explore. His students began to experiment with tools that he designed to enhance learning capacity, encourage sleep, enhance the immune system, and many others. His students finally became rather adept in these realms and they began to expand and develop the Monroe Institute in new and exciting directions under his guidance, but without attaining the natural expertise of the originator.
This school had many qualities in common with most of the voluntary adult educational and personal growth establishments that I encountered: they were all focused upon a teacher who, more or less acted as guru or guide. But to my knowledge, none of the teachers that I knew or heard about through others at this point had attained by their own confession, or had been acknowledged by a traditional lineage to have attained, or were awarded by their own students the stature of full enlightenment.
Bob Monroe had started to practice out of body travel as a discipline years ago, when he was a young man. His initial, startling experience of this altered state of awareness started spontaneously one night while he was sleeping and at the time he suffered the fact that he had no peers to whom he could relate his bizarre adventure. His fascination with these life-altering experiences lead him to write his first book Journeys Out of the Body in which he discusses his struggle to understand the experiences which had altered his perception of ‘reality’ and which firmly planted the phrase ‘out of body experience’ in the ground of our emerging modern discourse.
Over the course of many years, he became an experienced navigator of these dim waters. After he became confident of his own skills in this hidden dimension he began to wonder how he could be of service to others. When he became proficient enough, he began to visit family members who had recently died to find out how they were doing. It was his wish to help make the process of the release of one’s life more graceful, beginning with the stages leading to one’s physical death. He would go to sleep with the heartfelt intention to contact his recently deceased loved one in the wee hours. Each time he successfully performed this miracle he was able to exchange thoughts, love and greetings with his loved one in his astral form. Before his own death, even Bob’s understudies were able to visit such ‘dearly departed’ loved ones to assist them, calm their fears and render them whatever help they could offer.
Bob related several of his experiences to me. The one I remember best involved his father who had died several years earlier. In this case Bob came upon his parent in a sort of holding area called a "Recoveratorium". He found him standing alone in this ancient site gazing out of an archway overlooking a beautiful garden. Not wanting to intrude abruptly, Bob waited some distance away until his presence was sensed by his father, whereupon he turned and walked over to his visitor. As they embraced each other his dad said: "But Bob, what are you doing here?" He answered: "Why, I just wanted to see how you were doing." And Bob explained about his visits to those recently departed. He could see that his father was changed&emdash;he was young and healthy and full of curiosity about all of his son’s work and OOB experiments, especially with the dying. Soon they parted and Bob left after taking another look at the handsome garden beyond the great arch that he and his father had been standing under together, feeling reassured that all was going well.
Several years after this memorable event Bob got a phone call from his brother. Their mother, a physician, had been hospitalized and was not expected to live much longer. Bob, who resided in Virginia, took the next plane to Chicago. As he entered his mother’s hospital room he saw that although she was quite weak, she still seemed very interested in all of the gadgets in her room, which was understandable in light of her own background as a physician. As they talked, his mother suddenly dropped off to sleep. Her rest lasted a bit longer than he expected and he began to get concerned. Then he even called for the nurse. But before the nurse had responded, she suddenly raised her head, smiled and said: "My that was interesting!" She had read Bob’s book and had been practicing the OOB exercises that he described. This was just another such trip for her. The next day back in Virginia, he was driving in his car near his home when his Mother suddenly appeared on the seat beside him. She waved her good-bye to him and was gone. Bob said that she was one that he didn’t even try to visit in OOB because he felt that she was far from needing any earthly help of his and that she was long gone in any case.
Once he told me his reason for coming to this world. "Lee, I’m here to find my own and to journey with them to our home out there." And he pointed to the great nebula of Andromeda. "It’s up there, and in that place we hurtle by each other like blue clouds, exchanging packets of information." This was the ultimate reality of his inspired life.
I once worked with a Buddhist priest who was finding and releasing tormented souls in East Bay burial places. But what distinguished Monroe’s remarkable work is that it wasn’t combined with any religious framework or context at all.
His initial mission to me, which was to help me to develop OOB skills was, in retrospect, one of my greatest blessings. As one’s death approaches, one’s fear of the whole process increases. OOB is an excellent way to accustom oneself to new and, once feared, territories. Over the course of twenty years I attended a number of these more or less formal training courses. I had never been able to follow up on my interest in autogenic training, an older and very thorough discipline that originated in Germany. I found that I wasn’t particularly adept at Monroe’s experiments along these same lines, either. After many hours of work in various meditative systems, both quiet in body and very active (as in Subud), I never came close to an OOB experience. So, when I first worked with Robert Monroe, after having done his short course four times, in the last hours of the last day, lying there following the patter of his voice in the exercises, I suddenly became aware that I seemed to be looking out toward my left side&emdash;and I knew that I was still lying on my back. Eyes straight up to the ceiling&emdash;Wham!!!&emdash;I came out of it so fast. I was so overwhelmed by the discovery that I had actually turned in my body sheath to the left, ninety degrees, that that was the end of it! I was awed, and scared and ecstatic all at the same time.
Angie McDonald told me about this after Paul’s death. They had always been very devoted to each other and one night, without any warning, he suddenly sat up in bed. In seconds he was dead.
Angie was a very matter of fact sort of quiet woman who had never had a psychic experience in her life. So, she was quite startled when, during some mundane task four months after he died, Paul suddenly appeared in her room, standing there in a white suit. When she noticed that that he was smiling and that he seemed to be happy, she calmed down. They said a quick hello and then goodbye and then, just as quickly, he was gone. A few months later as she did her accounts, she suddenly became aware of a tremendous presence somehow connected in her feelings with Paul. But this time she was hardly even able to look in his direction, so overpowering was the vision. He was resplendent with light and in a white robe and his face was transfigured, majestic and ethereal. She could hardly bear the overwhelming energy that streamed from his presence. They exchanged a glance and he was gone. In her words "he had grown in spiritual stature so magnificently that I know that we go on evolving after death."
Both Monroe and Bentov described the awesome barriers to be negotiated as one’s consciousness goes from the physical and the outer reaches of Earth-space to the infinity of what we can only imagine. And here is an astounding similarity. About ten years after Bob’s confession about his home in Andromeda, I was speaking to Bentov on a similar theme. Referring to the world he came from he said: "Oh, in that place we pass by each other at terrific speeds like we are blue clouds of energy and as we pass by each other we exchange packets of information, greetings and love." I gulped and almost cried out at the coincidence. In a moment I asked: "But where do you come from? Where is this place you speak of?" And Bentov, without speaking, immediately pointed above, towards Andromeda. Then he said: "Well you go towards Andromeda and then you go off to the left and that’s where it is." He was always very explicit.
Bentov personified his own relationship to the same realm in quite a different way. His vastly accelerated and very short life was like the formation of a new star. He had a joyously earthy manner and was characteristically full of good humor. He was a rigorous scientist, healer, cosmic traveler and the epitome of humanness surrounded all his acts. But how did he come to his grand vision of the cosmos? He confided in me, during our meetings and exchanges, that he was able to enter at will into an internal, or meditative state and then travel mentally or, probably, astrally. Being a cautious soul, he was loath to reveal to most of his admirers his superb talents. But, I began to see the evidence of this from the utter focus and accuracy of his descriptions filled with the most minute details of the cosmic dimensions of infinite space-time which he provided in his book Stalking the Wild Pendulum.
"Well, it seems that the real reality&emdash;the micro-reality, that which underlies all our solid, good, common-sense reality&emdash;is made up, as we have just witnessed, of a vast empty space filled with oscillating fields! Many different kinds of fields, all interacting with each other. The tiniest disturbance in one field carries over into the others. It’s an interlocked web of fields, each pulsating at their own rate but in harmony with the others, their pulsations spreading out farther and farther throughout the cosmos.
Whenever a focus of disturbance tends to drive these fields out of their harmonious rhythm, the irregularity will spread and disturb the neighboring fields. As soon as the source of disturbance is removed, orderly rhythm will return to the system. Conversely, when a strong harmonizing rhythm is applied to this matrix of interlocking fields, its harmonic influence may entrain parts of the system that may have been vibrating off key. It will put more orderliness into the system.
We may look at a disease as such out-of-tune behavior of one or another of our organs of the body. When a strong harmonizing rhythm is applied to it, the interference pattern of waves, which is the organ, may start beating in tune again. This may be the principle of psychic healing."
Ben and I first met on a life-changing trip to Hiroshi Motoyama’s lab in Japan. We were immediately simpatico. We connected like two lost brothers, and this was so until he became very successful and famous. At first, the things he said were very modest and obviously toned down, but as we continued to talk on the long air trip to the east, the utter magnificence of what this astounding, really, impossible, and most unlikely man was about, started to emerge. First he described to us his ‘flights’ (really translocation of consciousness or fully awake OOB), and then he discussed his views of the universe which were nothing less than awesome. And as the model of the state that he was speaking of came forth, like the opening of a flower, the impact of all of this suddenly struck me, and apparently some of the others there, and we began to stare at each other in amazement. It became apparent to us that he really lived from a point of view that was fully integrated with his emerging awareness of the spiritual, or unseen dimension of existence. No big fanfare and talk about it. He knew&emdash;and he helped me know what I thought I had forgotten. In his first public speaking engagement, he just sat in the middle of the floor, talking and talking from his heart. He was so lovely. He bridged some gap inside of me and everyone that was present that connected us with our own awareness of the dimensions of the cosmic.
Sometime during this journey, I recalled that I had been told two years earlier by Stewart, a trance medium reader south of London, that I would take a trip to Japan and would write a successful book as a result of it. During that week in Japan, Ben and I were able to spend some time alone. Once free of the chaos of the large group of scientists, mostly all talking at once, we were able to speak at length about Ben’s knowledge and experience of the kundalini. I almost instantly recognized his genius and, fascinated by it all, persuaded Ben to come back west ASAP with his wife. As I have explained, this trip was a crucial turning point in the lives of all of us. I made the arrangements for a fundraising event which was held at Henry Dakin’s. Forty or so people paid $50 each to cover Ben’s expenses and to transcribe the audio and video tapes that we produced of material for Ben’s proposed book. It was during this period of time that I started thinking about writing a book that would provide my own medically and sociologically oriented description of Ben’s work. I felt a responsibility to Ben as a conservator. I was well placed professionally and I had many of the same interests and inclinations as Ben. It began to seem that I was the proper person to offer this very specialized perspective on Ben’s work&emdash;even if publishers didn’t seem to be interested at the time. As it happened, I published Kundalini, Psychosis or Transcendence, later published as Kundalini Experience privately before his Stalking the Wild Pendulum came out. My own inexperience in writing delayed me a year or two, and I had to rely on a lot of help. But my book has weathered the test of time and is still selling as well as ever. It is the leading book in the field&emdash;thus a classic in its own time.
Itzhak Bentov was born in Czechoslovakia. At the age of 15, he experienced the overwhelming knowledge and certainty that his family, as if in that instant, had all perished in Hitler’s holocaust. It was suddenly slammed into his consciousness. He told me that his pre-vision came while he was running down a hillside in that incomparably beautiful, colorful and mistreated city of Prague. He felt such intense and blinding pain that he knew with absolute certainty that an awful tragedy had befallen his father and mother. And he knew that his fate would likewise be the same if he remained in Prague. He was moved to take immediate action to save himself&emdash;not knowing how to contact his parents. In a matter of a few short days he was safely on his way to Israel.
While there, he served as an intelligence officer of the Israeli Army for 15 years and then came to the United States. One of the forces that moved him to relocate was his "discovery" of the remarkable Israeli psychic, Uri Geller. Geller had built his reputation by displaying his considerable psychic talents in television and live theater performances. He would demonstrate his unusual abilities to eager audiences by bending spoons without using any physical force. He would do demonstrations on TV where the audience was invited to put their out-of-commission watches on the stage and Uri would then get many of the watches to start spontaneously, which garnered him a lot of publicity. Bentov had done some work with Geller, but didn’t have the resources or inclination to do an in-depth study of him. Instead, Ben contacted Andreija Puharich, knowing that he might be interested in pursuing the research that Ben sensed was imperative. Puharich followed up on this and went to Israel to contact Uri there and they ended up working together for several years studying Geller’s psychic abilities. Puharich ultimately convinced Geller that his future didn’t lie in show business and that his psychic talents could be put to more interesting uses. Scattered throughout their work together were several tales. I heard that he once stopped a cable car while it was rolling down the mountain and then restarted it again. The cable car operators never guessed the real reason for its temporary interruption.
During the time they were working in Puharich’s laboratory in Ossening, NY all sorts of paranormal disturbances occurred. Once, when Uri was displeased with some personal arrangements he had made with Puharich, he apparently teleported Puharich’s large Mercedes Benz out to a nearby swamp. They had to call the fire department to get the car out, and the firemen were totally baffled because there weren’t any tire tracks on the muddy ground anywhere in the vicinity.
Another time, Uri said he was walking down a street in New York, distraught about some family matter and was wishing very ardently to be back in Ossening. He suddenly disappeared from the street and the next event he was aware of was crashing through the panes of glass of the gazebo in Puharich’s back yard.
One day, as the three of us were walking on the beach in San Francisco, a most unusual thing happened. We approached a nearby restaurant for lunch and entered the place, pausing a moment at the door. A waiter pointed out a table for us and we chatted away, slowly approaching the table. Geller cried out: "Look Lee, Look Andreija!! See that fork (as he pointed to it a couple of yards away) it’s already bending." And sure enough the fork had started to bend. One of it’s prongs was bent at right angles and it continued to bend as the three of us stood there watching it. None of us had touched the table yet. We sat down and Uri said to me; ‘You are good for me. Things can happen much easier when I have that kind of energy around me.’
At Stanford Research Institute, Uri got in big trouble. He and some of the rest of us frequently visited Hal Putoff and Russell Targ there, observing and performing PSI experiments with their team and the clairvoyant. When Uri was there, which was quite frequently, all the computers at times, and lab instruments as well, would go berserk and behave in most bizarre ways. Even the magnetometer there would go off on a spree. This angered and upset the resident physicists and government sponsored projects no end.
Once Bentov was here in the US, he took up meditation. He was soon involved in an increasingly active arousal of the energies of kiundalini in himself and began a detailed study of this phenomenon in his well-equipped laboratory. Ben’s goal in going to Motoyama’s lab on our trip was to repeat and confirm his own lab findings. Motoyama’s laboratory was reputed to be the best in the world&emdash;excluding those top-secret Government installations in the USSR and the US. Motoyama had agreed at our first meeting to repeat those experiments in his much more adequately equipped laboratory. However, as the days passed, Ben and I started to get anxious because Motoyama showed no sign of proceeding with the experiments. So, on the last possible day to do this, we had a meeting with Motoyama and his American assistant. After a good deal of back and forth, Motoyama finally took off his suit coat and put on his lab jacket. The four of us then proceeded with these epic experiments. Both of us have described these research findings in great detail in our books.
When we finally repeated Ben’s experiments in Motoyama’s laboratory, most or even all of this original thinkers theories were, in my view, confirmed. And these experiments also uncovered an anomaly which is yet to be fully understood. By placing an accelerometer on each side of the head, we uncovered a 25% differential in the amplitude of the micro-movements on the left and right hemispheres of his brain. This was a completely unexpected finding and begs to be researched in greater depth in the future. Ben demonstrated that the body is capable of a highly resonant state in which the pulse and cerebro-spinal fluid become synchronized with the breath, producing very fine micro-movements which induce an electro-magnetic flow which he described as a feeling of bliss or ecstasy. Ben had already successfully recorded wave-form signatures of the highly resonant state which were reflected by actual micro movements in his soma and head. He had posited in the beginning of his own experimentation that the fully developed reflections of these resonances would be measurable by the magnetometers that were available at that time, but it would be necessary to measure and study these bits of esoteric physiology on both sides of one’s head as they were of equal and opposite polarity. So it was necessary to record these minute pulses with two sensors placed on both sides of the head so that each of the elements would be clearly discerned. These micro-movements arise from an intuitive capacity to coordinate the breath and the heart-beat so that a resonant wave is encouraged. Ben hypothesized that in this state a discreet magnetic field is created in each hemisphere of the brain which stimulates the center of ecstasy deep in the brain’s core. This results in the amplification of the electro-magnetic current in the brain which he theorized would be measurable by a super sensitive magnetometer.
Ben built a sensitometer for me that was designed to imitate these micro-magnetic-electrical discharges by applying a pulsing magnetic field to either side of the head. Those inclined towards kundalini arousal would report significant subjective effects. He experimented with this device with a modest number of subjects, and I did likewise. One sensitive physician, after a few applications reported that he had dreamed in full color for the first time ever. Other more bizarre visual effects were also reported. About one out of every ten persons were similarly responsive to this magnetic stimulator and readily reported all these various effects.
Bentov had the intrinsic physiologic skill, yes genius, to cause his body to go into a highly resonant state at will. These states probably echoed the attainment of the various samadhis professed by great realizers in the past, souls of great genius and those closest to ultimate liberation. And similar states are undoubtedly found in certain dissociated persons, or what we western physicians call the mentally ill ones among us, but these experiences differ in that they are uncontrolled and largely negative.
Ben, in his short life, touched many profoundly. Years later I discovered that Motoyama had established a scholarship in Ben’s name following his death. His interest in the psychic dimension of existence attracted many gifted people. After our return from Asia, Ben worked with many investigators and meditators. Ben received his first four initiations on the astral or dream level and had a long history of contact with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the TM master. The last three initiations were received in that master’s physical presence. Ben developed an accelerometer to measure states of meditative trance at his teacher’s behest and was in weekly contact by phone with him for years discussing their mutual interests. I was disappointed to see that their organization never developed any facility to assist their practitioners when the arousal of the kundalini energies would occur. Ben was always highly critical of this irresponsible attitude. Ben and his pioneering work with the kundalini was surely disturbing for Maharishi. The process that Maharishi was teaching to produce the goal of levitation was, more often than not, arousing kundalini energies that apparently distracted his followers more than their brief and often bumpy flight. It was undoubtedly the reason that he did not honor his long intimacy with Ben by making him a researcher or professor at his large University near LA. Ben was also criticized for doing healing, a gift which was given to him in his very deep meditations. It seems likely to me that the guru himself had some initial kundalini experiences which were disturbing to him and never resolved. So he quickly dismissed all kundalini phenomena as a nuisance that potentially threatened his levitation program.
I had taken up TM at Ben’s urgent recommendation. I was pleased at the one shot initiation and mantra they gave me, but later I had many patients who became moderately disturbed (especially if they displayed any talent for trancing in meditation) while practicing TM. Some had to stop or change to other methods of meditation. I became disenchanted with it and soon left the TM movement.
Ben had the ability to travel mentally to virtually any place he wished in the universe. He acquired information that astounded astronomers and astrophysicists. Ben used to regale me with the most personal parts of these journeys in which he used the most wonderful colloquial language as well as naming all the dramatis persona. His accounts were ornamented with characters from the fairy world and biblical figures, which he called by funny names that he made up as easily as he breathed. Mo was one of the guardians in this great play of elemental forces that were very much alive in Ben’s accounts and that were found at every important transition or barrier. For example, to get out of the earth’s sphere one had to match wits, as it were, with particular archetypal figures. And to leave the solar system, still other hosts were encountered which needed to be convinced.
Ben’s untimely death in a DC 10 crash out of Chicago was a tragedy that I mourned deeply. Rick Ingrasci, a mutual friend, claims Ben told his secretary that he was all through with this life just before he got on that ill-fated plane. All I was certain of was that Ben had felt rejected pretty much all around. He just got too famous too quickly and often had simple answers for those enlightened ones who cherished ambiguities.
I am including a letter which Ben wrote to Fred Hoyle, the great British theoretical physicist, telling Dr. Hoyle of his findings in cosmology. Ben said that this august figure never answered his communication. Ben’s uncharacteristic reaction to Hoyle’s lack of response made me feel obliged to include this puzzling anomaly for the record as part of my great debt to Ben.
"Professor Fred Hoyle
Dept. of Astronomy
St. John’s College
Cambridge, England
March 13, 1968
Dear Professor Hoyle,
Introduction
This model tries to show that the two major ideas prevailing in cosmology today-the steady-state and the "big bang" theory-are not really contradicting each other, but are complementary and exist simultaneously. This model does not require the invention of any new physical laws and does not contradict (to my knowledge) any of the existing ones. It does, however, offer some possible avenues for explaining the distribution of quasars, the anisotropy in the "primeval fireball" radiation appearing in the data received by the Dicke instrument in Princeton, N.J., the deviation from the &endash;1.5 slope on the LogN-LogS curve, and possibly, the weak correlation between the red-shift and the radio magnitude of quasars.
Summary
I propose that a continuous "big bang" is going on in a steady state universe, where matter is continuously circulated through an ylem or singularity zone, in which it is broken down to its elements and is ejected from there to start a new cycle of expansion and evolution.
This is an attempt to build a model of the universe on the tendency of matter at very high levels of energy to expand through the ejection of a jet of high-speed matter, rather than through a gradual concentric expansion. The quasar is a typical illustration of this behaviour.
I also suggest that the normal spiral galaxy can be formed in two ways:
To support this model I use:
The model predicts that:
For the sake of informality, I would like now to dispense with the "it is postulated" and "the data seem to indicate" type of writing, and switch to a direct story narrative, which suits my model better.
Let us assume now that we are suspended in the fifth dimension, far outside our universe. We can now encompass all time, matter and space there is in our universe. After our eyes have become used to the darkness, we see in front of us an elongated, faintly luminous, transparent melon shape having a funnel at each end of its long axis (Fig.1). Looking more closely, we note some movement (we exist outside time). Specs of light are sliding slowly out of the larger funnel on the right side, moving in straight lines down along the planes of time-space, converging as they approach the other end, and disappearing in the smaller funnel, at the bottom of which we note a bright light. We assume now that we have on hand an elongated torus and that the funnels on each side of our melon are connected inside by a long conical passage. The specs of light somehow traverse the distance from one funnel to the other inside this torus, unseen to us. We also realize that the specs moving on the outside of the torus are composed of matter, galaxies maybe, and that we are watching a part of the evolution and death of these galaxies. We don’t know yet what is going on inside the torus, so let us slice it up along its long axis (Fig. 2), and see.
In the central portion of the torus we find on the left a strongly luminous region, in the middle of which we think we see a dark spot or streak. Moving to the right we see a diffuse gas or vapor emanating from this region, expanding and maybe even accelerating to the right. From time to time we see highly luminous specs emitted by the strongly luminous region. They seem to stay closer to the center of what we realize now to be an expanding jet of vapor, which seems to be breaking up into separate clouds. These latter appear to condense more and more, as they approach the other side. About half way through the conical jet we see quite well defined blobs. We also note that some of the bright specs which happened to float too close to the boundaries of the jet tend to loose their brightness. They seem to stay together due to their higher density, and are less affected by local turbulence in the jet.
We now begin to speculate: "What we see are galaxies falling to their death in a continuous gravitational collapse, from which matter emerges through a (Penrose) topological hole into a new universe. The dark spot in this bright ylem may be the stuff that has gone beyond the Schwarzschild radius, and the bright region to the right of it is completely reshuffled matter boiling off as diffuse plasma. The bright specs in the plasma could be quasars; they seem to appear spasmodically.
We follow the jet further, and by now we intuitively know what is going to happen. The jet of matter is expanding, losing energy, and condensing into more discrete blobs of higher luminosity. Gradually it slows down, fans out into a wide funnel, and starts falling back towards the ylem, which is the gravitational center of the system. The fanning out seems to occur due to the lateral velocity component which the particles in the jet possess. Now the matter begins to fall back describing a wide arc, overshooting the ylem region, and entering it from the rear, via the inlet funnel, with a "big bang".
As we watch all this action, some previously not fully understood concepts become clear to me: "So, this is what is meant by a finite but unbounded universe, and by ‘time is infinite’…" I realize that time is not really moving-time is just there, closed in on itself. The galaxies are moving along the planes of time, each carrying its space with it, and this is why their inhabitants experience time; and although time seems to have a direction to them, it is only because of their movement through it. From our vantage point here, in the fifth dimension, I realize that the trajectories described by the most outlying galaxies are the ones which describe the limits of time and space. Outside them there is no space and time-just a void. They constitute the fuzzy "skin" of the universe.
It occurs to me that time-space, which is quite rarified on the outside skin, becomes more and more compressed as it nears the center of the torus, and that this may have some effects on the velocity of light….But here my feeble mental equipment gives out…
To explore further, we will ourselves to the mouth of the elongated torus, which keeps spouting galaxies. Here, facing this funnel (Fig.3) we watch the activity and try to pick out and follow a single galaxy on its trajectory. It soon dawns on us that in this projection we are watching a pulsating universe. A galaxy comes out of the center-the ylem (we can see it by looking down the funnel), it moves towards the "edge of the universe" and starts falling back (we can still follow it a little beyond the horizon)-into the big bang. "A slightly distorted simple harmonic motion"-is our conclusion,-"if we look at it from the standpoint of an individual galaxy, in this axial projection we see an expanding-collapsing universe. But looking at the whole picture-it is steady state".
We will ourselves to the inlet funnel facing the ylem, but we find it too bright to look at. There is also too much noise, so that we float again above the now familiar elongated melon. Now that we have gained some understanding of this system, we can try to locate our galaxy within it. Hoping that intuition in the fifth dimension is equivalent to knowledge in the third, we decide that our galaxy must be located inside the jet not far from the exit funnel, and we look hard trying to find it. Even though the whole structure is transparent and lacey, our sight cannot pick out the shape of the jet. Something prevents the light from penetrating through the space between the inside jet and the outside layers. Suddenly we are engulfed in a whirlpool. The universe distorts and spins around us, and we find ourselves back in our familiar surroundings.
I must apologize for the liberties I have taken, and hope that you are still reading this letter. Now I would like to speculate on the above and suggest:
Let us now see whether we can muster any facts or near facts to support the above hypothesis.
Starting, conveniently, from the end, i.e. point 10, we find in a book by Burbridge & Burbridge "Quasi-Stellar Objects", 1967, a chart showing the distribution of quasars in galactic coordinates. It shows that the quasars known today consist of two approximately antipodal groups, centering more or less about an axis inclined at about 20-25 degrees to the north and south poles of our galaxy. There are fewer quasars having a Z>1.5 in the north, as compared with the south pole. However, the relatively tight group of Z>1.5 quasars in the north is surrounded by a large concentric group of slower quasars. On the south side both the fast and the slow quasars are intermingled.
Let us place our galaxy now about in the center of the expanding stream of matter (Fig.4), and the trace of a few world lines for these quasars. For the sake of simplicity, let us align the galactic N-S poles with the axis of the jet. Let us assume the crossectional radius of the jet to be at the point at which we are now located, of the order of 5-8 X 10 9 light years, or just about the limit of our telescopes. If we divide our sphere of vision into two arbitrary zones of slow or close and far and fast quasars, we find the cones of vision for the fast vs. the slow quasars agreeing fairly well with the distribution data in the book by Burbridge.
If we take the available distribution data as statistically valid, then it makes sense to expect fewer fast quasars in the northern hemisphere, because of their age, loss of energy, and their possible evolution into radio galaxies. This will explain also the ratio between the number of slow and fast quasars. On the other hand, the southern hemisphere, which is the source of the quasars, should have more fast ones, and the numerical ratio between the fast and the slow quasars should be smaller.
We may have to add that due to the relative nearness of the fast quasars in the southern hemisphere to the ylem region, their red-shift may be exaggerated, and tip the numerical ratio in their favor. It is unlikely that the quasars will be discovered in the region outside the north and the south cones of vision-
- because of the rarity of the phenomenon.
- even with improved instrumentation we should be reaching the limits of observable universe in the approximate direction of the galactic equator. As far as the LogN-LogS slope is concerned, it is clear that this kind of anisotropy will result in a steeper slope than &endash;1.5.
As regards the anisotropy in the "primeval fireball" radiation, found by the group at Princeton using the Dicke radiometer, it would tend to reinforce this model. They found a 12-hour periodicity in their readings. Granted, the anisotropy is small, but consistent. It is what one would expect when taking these measurements in the northern hemisphere. At the Princeton latitude, whether they are measuring the equatorial radiation or the polar radiation, both measurements are made in the "shadow" of the ylem radiation (Fig.5). Predictably, they get a 12-hour periodicity, as Princeton moves from a relatively "light shadow" to a "deeper shadow" of radiation, nearer to the north pole, every 12 hours.
We could use this model to predict that if measurements would be made with the identical setup on the southern hemisphere, the absolute magnitude of the readings should be higher, and by switching between a point on the southern hemisphere normal to the radiation, and an antipodal point, we should get the highest possible anisotropy readings. From these anisotropy figures the divergence of the jet and the distance to the ylem could be calculated.
Speculations on the nature of quasars, their evolution, relationship to other galaxies, variation in their brightness, and CRT analog.
I am starting out on this set of speculations armed with an abysmal ignorance of the relevant facts. This will allow me to roam freely, without inhibition in this area, and whenever unpleasant facts come flying in my face-I’ll just duck.
Remember seeing in the previous chapter, how quasars were ejected out of the ylem? Let us assume that the quasars are "a chip from the old block", and that matter at such energy levels has a propensity to squirt out jets of material, in order to get rid of some excess energy. In short, let us assume that quasars are miniature universes, behaving just like "the old block". From now on sailing is smooth. The pictures of 3C273 show this jet clearly.
In order to draw up some kind of a scheme of evolution, I suggest that the jet in the 3C273 (which carries its magnetic bottle with it) will eventually turn back and close on itself, and will look for a while like the "old block" itself (Fig.6). If we assume that the quasar 3C275.1 is superimposed over radio galaxy NGC4651, then the two jets, one long and one short, with a halo around their tip, would be a good example of this. The short broad jet will start to lose its energy, slow down, and the whole structure will flatten. The magnetic bottle will collapse (radio galaxies?), and eventually we end up with a tame, normal looking galaxy. In short, I suggest that the normal spiral galaxy could evolve from two contrasting sources: a diffuse gas condensing into a spiral galaxy, and a high density blob ejecting a jet, which eventually leads to a similar structure.
As far as luminosity is concerned, it will depend on the stage of evolution in which the quasar happens to be. When the quasar is young, the central core and the jet are not obscured by the veil of returning matter, and it will have a high optical luminosity. In the later stages, when the returning matter has obscured the core and most of the jet, optical luminosity will be high only in those objects which have their jets aligned with our line of vision. The radio luminosity will be affected less by this veil. The fact that there is only a weak correlation between the red-shift, optical, and radio magnitudes of quasars makes me feel good about this. Large variations in luminosity could occur when this highly collimated beam veers slightly from our line of vision (it would be like looking into the business end of a blow-torch with an unstable flame). This instability could arise from a precession, wobble or random instability in the magnetic bottle, which collimates the beam.
The radio emission patterns could also be attributed to the position of the object and its stage of evolution. In short, we may look at N galaxies, Seyferts, and radio galaxies as stages in the evolution of quasars.
The Cathode-Ray Tube Model
I would like to present an electrical analog, which in some points overlaps, in others does not overlap the model described above.
Let us assume that galaxies have a net electrical charge, a negative one, so that a galaxy will be the "electron" in this model. From here on, as shown in Fig.7, the ylem region is the cathode area. The electrons are boiling off the cathode, and are kept in beam form, being accelerated by the focusing coil (our magnetic bottle). The anode region is the other end of the focusing coil. The electrons are notorious for overshooting the anode, especially if the anode is of such a tenuous nature. They turn back, overshoot the anode again, and as they pass beyond the half-way mark along the coil, they start to decelerate, repelled by the cathode region. They lose energy and charge, then converge and fall onto the back of the cathode, which has the properties of a diode, allowing the electrodes to go only in one direction."
Carl Sagan is full of such inspiring speculations in his novel Contact, his paean of such skills. In fact, in this book his protagonist, a young woman scientist experiences what could be understood as a kundalini arousal. I understood her to represent Sagan’s true shakti and his own contact with divinity. He stoutly denied this in his public statements, possibly fearing that any such utterances would damage his image with fellow astrophysicists who are less inclined to expand their universes to include a divine dimension. Manfred Clynes studies in the physics of music touches these realms as well. I am convinced that one who reads Contact with an open heart together with Miracles of Mind by Russel Targ and Jane Katra would conclude that Carl came to possess a much fuller realization of our humanity than is common.
Len Ochs work in ‘EEG driving’ also touches on some of this complex field.
None of the disciplines that I have mentioned here, except those of Bentov, ever attained the stature of a scientific research model. Ben’s experiments did this to my satisfaction but his findings were only barely coherent and convincing enough for any follow up to have occurred to date. And to date none of them have been repeated. I urge you to read Bentov and his Stalking the Wild Pendulum and see his model in my book on Kundalini Experience to compare paradigms.
Some day, when and if we come into our full heritage of wisdom and love as described by our most transcendent world realizer Avatar Adi Da&emdash;God willing&emdash;all of these beginnings of Monroe, Tesla, Clynes, Royal Rife, Puharich, Ochs, Bentov, Targ et al will become an integral part of our common humanity. In this great marriage of physics and psyche, we as a civilization will not miss the mark again&emdash;but will emerge as a society which is thoroughly capable of human love. Only our fearless completion of the great efforts of these pioneers will enable us to truly enter the ‘new age’ that we have all faintly envisioned.
I had followed Russsel’s work with remote viewing for years before he began his fascinating collaboration with Jane Katra. When Russel was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, he asked for Dr. Kdamn about their own busses and how they are maintained." And his passengers never react except with blithe indifference towards the usual neglectful manner of these drivers (of whom he is the most extreme and worst example.) He will continue to drive this hulk one inch at a time until it falls over dead and neither they or he will care one bit.
I have heard more than enough. I abandon this trip and throw myself on the tender mercies of the nearest hotel clerk and the phone company and summon aid so as to reach home in one piece.
The finale of my first episode with the refractory, feet-dragging young mis-fit had a sobering and mildly positive ending. I had a pleasant drive down a month later with an affable and rather knowledgeable man. Sensing that I had a sympathetic listener, I told him my tale of modest woe during our trip to Santa Rosa. As we reached the Central Santa Rosa turn-off, he was easily persuaded to drop me off at a more convenient place for all the walking I had to do. And as he slowed for this stop I asked him how I could pay my fare which is routinely collected as we disembark in Santa Rosa. He replied that the drivers try always to police themselves and that this particular driver was already well-known as they both drove the same routes and that this man would do no further driving for the company. In addition, he said; "This trip is on me." So ended that tale of travail. But little did I know that my next ride would be nearly as lurid a story&emdash;as you will see.
Now this is some story&emdash;hardly believable, so let me skip to six weeks later. The same bus line with a lady driver who is forty minutes late "due to horrid traffic tie-ups." So we get underway. To my consternation and surprise, she boldly strikes out for the South. She runs on for five miles and suddenly spies a road which directs us to the Marin highway North and she rushes into high gear. Six miles later she continues to rush right by our off ramp to the East. When I point out this error, she takes the next off ramp four miles North and finds herself in a road engineer’s nightmare and quickly stops dead in the narrow country lane. In a road only forty feet wide, she maneuvers this mammoth bus around ignoring the irate and puzzled cars going both ways around us, until she makes the many passes it takes to finally get the bus turned around and finally(?) on our way. Little do we know that her follies have only just begun. After guiding her a bit, because no one else on the bus seems a bit aware of our predicament as twilight sets in. But onward me buckos&emdash;just "leave the driving to us." That is just what my companion seems moved to do. I have just five minutes ago asked the driver if she would accept my help with directions and she retorts; "If you want to." Here I am, lost in no man’s land, and I am empowered to help "if you want to." My lady is concerned with this colleagues "rights of "authority" as if this were the high seas amidst a furious storm with the world’s best captain at the helm. I have news for you&emdash;this is a crisis with nobody at the helm. So I growl at my lady and she leaves for the other end of the bus. Now, truly I have a crawling mess right in my lap. (Nearly) undaunted, I continue and we stop for passengers in the coming up town, then head for the hills with the worst of the roads here abouts coming up. Our fearless driver slows down to an awesome five to ten miles per hour and finally we stagger into our destination. The finale bears testimony to the obdurate nature of this champion of the road. I have just warned her to drive straight down Main Street and to continue straight on to the next stop she has. As we get underway in our friend’s car we note the signals of the bus a half mile down the road&emdash;instead of pressing straight ahead are flashing for a right turn. I am impulsed to chase her down to correct this final folly, but the two ladies warn me&emdash;she is not your problem any longer.
I got into the bus and the young driver
looked at me with wide eyed curiosity
I said: "To San Fancisco."
"What is your senior fare?"
"Two dollars", he said
"You are so young in your moving"
I replied: "I’m over 80."
He exclaimed: "You don’t say!"
"And I hope to be blessed to live much longer."
He twinkled saying:
"You are already blessed."
"Yes, but I opt for brownie points."
And we both laughed mightily
What a miracle of love we both felt.
When I was exploring my father’s background I learned that in Dante’s Paradiseo the Sannella family is mentioned as one of three ancient and honorable lineages. They originated in Florence and found themselves in political disfavor after Dante’s time. It became necessary to either change their name or leave Northern Italy. About half of them changed their name and disappeared and the others went to Rome or Naples where they flourished, according to my mother’s research. It was my mother who, in her ardent pursuit of Americanism, changed my Christian name from Liberatore, which is my grandfather’s name, to Lee. I am thinking of changing my name back to Liberatore.
The high point of my first two years in college was playing on the soccer team, tennis team and other exploitations of my vital physical self. And I had many romantic attachments. But I never dated a Jewish girl. I couldn’t stand the thought of one. I ran in the opposite direction. Being so overly attached to my mother, I resisted her attempts to provide guidance for her promising son.
I spent my first two years after High School graduation at a small international college in Springfield, American International College. I spent the third year enrolled at the University of Massachusetts, planning to get into the best medical school I could think of. At the end of that term, I decided to visit some medical schools. I was interviewed at Yale and they accepted me on the spot. That was THE medical school to go to at the time. I had a wonderful four years of medical school with princes and princesses for professors who I loved dearly, so dearly in fact that I asked my father to establish a scholarship for students interested in researching the physiology of altered states after I had written my first book. I graduated from Yale in the top third of my class with an MD.
When I attended my fiftieth reunion at Yale I was deeply disturbed by the appointment of the former head of the FDA as the new Dean of the Medical School. Their unapologetic pursuit of pharmaceutical moneys has apparently left their research program permanently flawed. For those who had developed respect for holistic medical practices, this appointment felt like a direct assault. We were all aware of this man’s history of selectively prosecuting physicians who had embraced alternative therapies. As I spoke with the various professors and alumni there, it was hardly comforting to find several others who agreed that this appointment was a travesty and that it represented a tragic turning point in their alma mater’s history.
I became board certified as an ophthalmologist in 1955 and then was asked in 1957 and again in 1959 to become a Board Examiner. This is an honor which is unheard of in students who have not had a residency in ophthalmology and outstanding performance in the field. My only outstanding performance was that I was only unable to answer one question during my examination which was based on a question in a journal which had been published only the week before. I didn’t accept the second time they asked me because I felt that I had already disqualified myself because of other interests that were taking over my medical career, namely Psychiatry. I trained in Psychiatry, but I didn’t choose to take my boards in Psychiatry. Then I practiced Ophthalmology privately and at Kaiser for twelve years and practiced Psychiatry as a resident in training and in private practice in the Bay area.
In the early 50’s I had started a private practice in psychiatry and was doing full time ophthalmology at Kaiser. I developed an inclination for raising my own organic produce for my family and was pursuing this a few hours every day. I heard of the work of Lysenko and more about Luther Burbank, who made his home in Santa Rosa for more than fifty years. "I firmly believe, from what I have seen, that this is the chosen spot of all this earth as far as Nature is concerned." I read all of the published works of the latter and most of the published works of the former and had contacted Stark Nursery who had the ownership of all of the Burbank patents. They gave me free access to all of the Burbank stock. I attempted some grafting and learned that Stark nurseries had not been successful in adapting the Burbank varieties to the east coast. But I learned a great deal about agriculture at this time in the spirit of medical research, as was my habit.
Just before graduating from medical school I developed an infantile form of tuberculosis. I was working with infected patients under hazardous conditions that would not be considered acceptable by today’s standards. I struggled with the white plague for fifteen years. During that time I had more than one near death experience before the active infection finally succumbed to streptomycin, one of the first antibiotics which was effective against TB. I was one of the first patients to receive it, but due to the inexperience of my physicians I sustained permanent vestibular damage. Unfortunately, when I started to have early symptoms of damage, they didn’t know enough to become alarmed. I was left a vestibular cripple, totally without a sense of balance. The only sensors that I have to tell me where my feet and head are oriented in space are the soles of my feet and my eyes. With no visual information I am totally immobilized. In dim light, same thing. It is progressively disabling because the sensation from my lower limbs is gradually declining, as the result of the process of aging. So my feet are providing less information. It was thus impressed upon me that I am an important player in the arena of my personal health. I have never done what any doctor suggested if I thought it was excessive or invasive or I simply intuited that it was the wrong thing to do.
One of my first interests in medical research arose in my fourth year of medical school and was published in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 1940. I had become fascinated with a substance extracted from bull testes which enhanced the bioavailability of medications and removed some of the normal metabolic barriers. This was eventually developed into a pharmaceutical known as Hyaluronidase (cartilage dissolving enzyme). It is still in used selectively in surgical cases and for other reasons.
Then I became interested in another substance about which a Professor of Psychiatry L. J. Medunna had just written a book called Carbon Dioxide Therapy. After an initially explosive session with this hallucinogen, I proceeded to do five years of work which included six or seven thousand sessions of inhalations. These sessions, given to my private patients to assist their ventilation processes were aimed toward providing a more humane healing method in psychiatry than the one that was in vogue at the time, electro-shock therapy. I never wrote a paper on this because I was diverted by my many other interests in research.
While reading a book on life extension, I stumbled upon an article which was written twenty five years ago by Cal Tech Professor of Physics Derek Fender. He had published his research findings in his university journal which was not widely circulated. He had developed a method of determining visual acuity which was fifty times more accurate than the current methods. It occurred to me that this would be an excellent way of detecting early disorders in physiology. The progression of a health compromising process would have been reflected in a change of visual acuity.
When I called to make further inquiries I found that Derek Fender had just had a major stroke. No one that I talked to seemed interested in his work. I presented this information to the Opthamology professor at Yale, because Yale is my alma mater. He was mildly interested, but not the slightest concerned with it’s potential. I also contacted the head of UC who had run the Glaucoma division of the Opthamology service at UC. He expressed some interest in it, and thought that the research division should handle it, but they never had any interest in it. I was working on the hypothesis that glaucoma is essentially a disorder of insufficient oxygenation by the blood to essential visual functions. I even talked to a man who was on Dr. Fender’s research team. He had done some further research but was now needing a grant to continue. That was the end of that trail.
The next interest I had was piqued by an incident I had read about in the early forties. A stowaway on one of the major airlines was taken out of the baggage compartment ‘frozen’. He was unconscious from hypothermia and oxygen deprivation, but still alive. For a number of years I worked with small mammals subjecting them to the oxygen saturation found at 50,000 feet, inducing a state of hibernation in a vacuum chamber while dropping their body temperature. This worked, but I saw that I would immediately have to have more sensitive instruments for measuring their core body temperature and that was not possible with my funding. I envisioned the use of this state of hibernation for emergency situations following severe injury. The patient could be relieved of pain and could rest for a time without the toxic side-effects of drugs. The French tried to accomplish this with drugs and hypnosis to handle severe complications of schizophrenia but I knew that there must be better agents. For instance we know of an arctic bird which, when startled, goes into a coma. It’s pulse goes from 150 to less than 20. Thus, by giving the appearance of death it escapes from it’s predator or whatever is menacing it. There are hundreds of other animals and plant forms which contain similar agents which are capable of altering the physiology in this manner, safely. It seems that I wasn’t the first to come up with this idea.
So, I did a lot of medical research and had aspirations to do even more, but I became more and more focused on my primary interest&emdash;the immortality of spirit. This intuition of Consciousness, of which I had been aware of since my earliest experiences was simply more attractive to me than the possibility of doing further research in such far out animal and human physiology at this point in my life.
My first religious experience happened while I was in Medical School in my second year. I remember sitting at my desk and studying and all of a sudden I felt I was in a different space and I just experienced this flow of knowledge and intuition of every function of my body. I knew it’s physiology, it’s chemistry, how it worked, what it was for as a unity. I could scan my whole body and review it with an intimate understanding. It was what I would call a unity experience. I was left with this beatific vision of the body, it’s physical and chemical processes and sensitivities. It was like the climax of a love affair with my own physiology and all that I had been stuffing myself with in medical school. Everything that I had been studying took it’s place in a Gestalt that was more than a sum of it’s parts, it had a religious dimension which I would later recognize more literally as the Divine. It was simply a prelude to that without any great to-do. It was sort of like an admission at the physical level that I was in love with what I was studying. I was overwhelmed by it’s beauty, it’s completeness. It became infused with meaning for the first time, clearly, instead of just intuition and a drive motivated by questionable sources. Now, later in my life I would interpret that moment as a glimpse of another dimension. So I advocate: do what you love and refuse to compromise to it’s detriment, which in this case is your inherent spirituality and the meaning that you follow as your guide in life. If it doesn’t have meaning, it’s too early or too late for you.
If any part of this document should, by some off chance, attain some popularity, I can only ask the forgiveness of my heirs. At this moment the only excuse for writing of these things in my life is the rush towards death that I feel acutely whenever I look at myself and see, realistically, where I am. I see myself losing my long and short term memory, my body half failing, my mind not up to creating it’s own longed for silence amidst the usual clamor I find me in. I see my friends failing fast, losing it. The possibility of losing my ‘vision’ frightens me to the quick. Precision is no longer a possibility for me who must meander in the rich garden of the limited but fascinating scope of my own life, herein recorded in summary form. The only other excuse for recording this part of my life is so that my children and Tresa may get a bit broader glimpse of me than was possible from my random and many times covert excursions (as a way of thinly disguising and, at the same time, revealing my almost desperate need to be heard by them) off into the blue, in almost drunken heedlessness of their feelings which may have been eons away from all this scrambling around that my activities must have seemed to them. But not to me. These visions, ultimately, are the most precious values that I have tried to live by…and with any luck, I will be graced to die by.
As you have seen in my stories, my fascination is with the visionary essence of all those whom I have contacted personally or through their writings. That has been the perspective which has evoked the most meaning and is the source of the excitement which adorns and renders holy all of my life.