I refer to the experiences described in these pages as “experiences” rather than “events” not so much because they weren’t events, but rather because I have no independent “proof” that they actually occurred, or occurred as I describe them. All that I can honestly report are the memories, which I have attempted to describe without embellishment or explanation. I have attempted to stay within the guidelines of Dragnet’s Sgt. Joe Friday, “All we want are the facts, ma’am.” I am attempting to merely report, not interpret or otherwise assign any “higher” meaning to the experiences. Of course, in the still of the night I sometimes wonder if there is something behind these experiences, some “secret” that I can use in my life. (However, I have no knowledge of any hidden meaning, or hidden reality. All that I have are the memories.)
After telling a friend one of these stories, he wanted to know when these experiences started. As I think back in attempting to answer his question, I find that maybe there was no starting point – they have been a part of my life from my earliest memories. My first “memory” is of the moment of birth as a very physical feeling of pressure, squeezing, and my nose being smashed flat against my face. Sometimes when calmly resting or meditating I recall the feelings of that early experience. The memory takes the form of physical feelings of pressure and movement.
A brief history of my life might be useful to help you understand some of what might have formed my current outlook, and might have been instrumental in my taking note of the experiences described in this book as something worth remembering.
As a very young child I remember having “invisible” friends. While they were invisible, nevertheless they were real to me. We talked, laughed and played together. My mother tolerated them until I reached school age – at which point she took me aside and told me that while these friends might be fun to play with, they weren’t actually “real” and I had to stop playing with them, and had to stop believing in them. She told me that she knew what I was doing because she did the same as a young child, but that it just doesn’t work with other people who don’t understand. I remember that it was a very sad day for me because on that day as I agreed to let them go, it felt like moving away from my best friends. Even though I agreed with her that I would stop talking and playing with them, I silently promised them that I would not forget them or make them go away.
After that day I didn’t interact with these friends. However, I think I was always a little different from most of my peers. For example, when in the third grade other kids would play ball and other games during recess, I liked to go into an area near the playground where the grass was tall and I was hidden. In the springtime I loved to lie back on the sweet, soft grass and watch the clouds drift overhead. There were almost always one or two friends who would join me as we watched all kinds of animals and other things in the clouds. If there were no clouds, I would lie on my stomach and watch the tiny, brightly colored flowers and all of the little bugs crawling through their miniature forest. I didn’t feel anti-social in any way, just not interested in many of the normal “kid’s” games. During summer months I would gather up a friend or two and we would hike all day in the forest and hills near my home. We would start out right after breakfast with my dog, CaseC (we got him at the pound, and he was in Case C), and roam for miles and miles exploring and imagining what it must have been like hundreds of years ago. My mother never questioned where we were going, or what we were doing. The only rule was to get home before dark. I started doing this when I was about nine, and kept it up through most of high school years.
When I was around fifteen years old it seemed like my invisible friends were back once again. They were still invisible, and they never actually spoke to me – but I “felt” them as a presence. They make me feel like I am never truly alone; I am always in the presence of friends.
During high school I was a bit of a “problem child.” I was on the “college prep” track, but was not allowed to attend a lot of the classes. I think I was too disruptive, and there was no other place to put kids like me. In those days there were no “special” classes or avenues for those of us who were too interested in the subject matter. I was “kicked out” of Biology class by being sent to the creek behind the school to collect euglenas. The teacher said I should be able to spot them by eye, but since they are less than a 1/100 of an inch long, that was unlikely. I should have researched the issue to figure out actually how to catch those little guys, but the truth was that I was happy to be spending time on the banks of the creek. It kept me out of the classroom for most of the year, and I had a great time hanging out in “my” creek. I still had to do the homework, and had to attend class for labs and tests – but the rest of the time during the biology class I was free to explore and observe in my little wild part of the campus. I also got kicked out of Chemistry class with two other boys. We had to spend the lecture time in the lab, which wasn’t a very safe option for the three most inquisitive boys in the class. I think it was sheer luck that we didn’t blow up the lab, burn the building down, or poison ourselves. For example, one morning one of the brighter boys in school and I were fooling in the lab during lecture time. We were “testing” a rather large electrolytic capacitor with a power supply, charging and discharging the capacitor to see how it worked. I am not sure exactly what caused the explosion, but the capacitor blew up with the sound of so much dynamite, throwing the pieces of the metal case and the inner parts throughout the lab space. We were startled, but luckily not hurt. The teacher opened the door to the lecture room to and asked what had happened, then closed the door without a word – acting as if nothing had happened!
Another class from which I was barred was an English class. I had to spend the entire year in a room across from the normal classroom. Luckily, after a couple of months of “solitary confinement” two very nice girls were sent to join me. We wrote stories and poems and generally had a good time. Before long, I convinced them to help me create a campus literary magazine that featured stories, poems and other writings by students from around campus. We got permission to use the mimeograph machine to publish it. That magazine continued for a few years after we graduated, but finally faded away.
After graduating from high school I found that I had a choice of going to war in Vietnam, or going to college. I chose college. However, I discovered a major problem when signing up for school. They wanted me to declare a major, and I had no clue what that might be. I finally decided to go through the college catalogue and mark out those areas that I felt I couldn’t do for one reason or another. It took me several days to work my way down through the list, finally coming to the point where there was only one unmarked major – physics! So I declared that as my major. This was a much bigger decision than I understood at the time. For one thing, physics is HARD – very hard. The old stuff (Newtonian Physics) was pretty easy since it was all about falling apples, levers, rolling balls, rocket ships, flying bullets and things like that. However, once past those very tangible topics it got really weird really fast. All of a sudden I found that questions of infinity, the origin of the universe, quarks, leptons, energy fields, variable time, variable mass and all kinds of wacky concepts were the topics of study. It was all about the tiny, the huge, the invisible, waves, entities that are waves and particles simultaneously and much, much more. I found it almost impossible to concentrate on the topics because I was so enraptured with the ideas of how very different the universe and all things in it are than what we think they are. Obviously, reality was nothing like what I experienced, or what I had come to believe in. At one point a professor told me that I needed to stop trying to understand it all and to just “do the math.” Even math had become such a terribly abstract thing that I couldn’t figure out how to do it any longer. By the time I was finishing up my senior year I was lost and could find nothing to hang on to. Luckily, I realized that I had already taken enough classes to graduate, so I did – without finishing the last class that was offered (advanced quantum mechanics). Education in physics had a profound impact on my “spiritual” view of the world – it shook it down to the point where there was no longer any ground to stand on. I came to believe that there is not only nothing but tiny particles and energy, but there actually aren’t any tiny particles either – it is ALL just energy! What we think we know is just in our mind, we actually “know” nothing at all.
While immersed in physics and math (the language of physics), I also had to take all of the requisite “general education” courses. One of my big concerns was the requirement for taking a speech class. The idea of writing a speech and then presenting it was rather terrifying. Luckily, about that time the school hired a “speech guru” who was a great presenter. He was one of those people who can stand in front of a crowd and rally their support for just about any cause. I guess the word for this attribute is “charismatic.” The women all were in love with him, the men respected him and didn’t even seem to mind their women hanging all over him, and the university seemed to think that he spoke for them. This was during the time of the Vietnam War protests, which gave him a natural topic and audience. One day I noticed that he was teaching a class in “interpersonal communications” that met the “speech” requirement, and didn’t involve writing or presenting speeches. All that was required was talking to people! I signed up immediately, greatly relieved that I didn’t have to stand in front of a group to give a presentation.
Actually, it was a bit more complex than just talking to people – it was really a lot more about listening to people. The class included a wide range of topics including verbal and non-verbal communication issues. I found this to be a very exciting class because it clarified and made explicit topics that I only knew about from my “intuitive” knowledge. Not only did I get an “A” in the class, but the professor hired me to help with future classes as his classroom assistant. During this time I discovered that being charismatic is something that can be learned – there are techniques and “tricks” to get people to believe and get emotionally involved with your point of view. He showed me many of these tricks, and gave me an opportunity to try them out. They work!
The field of interpersonal communication caught my attention, and started me down a path of psychology with the idea of becoming a therapist. This was during the hay day of “encounter groups.” This approach seems to have fallen out of favor, but in general it consists of a group of individuals who engage in intensive verbal and nonverbal interaction, with the general intention of increasing awareness of self and sensitivity to others, and improving interpersonal skills. I attended many of these sessions more as an assistant leader than as a member of the group. However, because of the nature of the technique, I found it impossible to avoid becoming engaged at a pretty deep level. Over time I became skilled at leading these groups, and was recognized as a person who could be helpful to others. I thought I was on my way to becoming a healing therapist.
However, after a time I started to realize that it was all about ego, my ego and the egos of the leaders and teachers. We were manipulating people’s emotions, self-images, and feelings of self-worth. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as it is done in a caring and helpful way – but it became rather overwhelming to me. I found that I could use techniques to get people to like me, respect me, and in some cases think that they loved me. I found that I could use techniques to help people feel good or bad about themselves. I could adjust their self-image and feelings of worthiness (for good, or not so good). I started to discover that some people had come to depend upon me to keep them feeling good – and if I wasn’t available they felt lost or sunk into depression. I found this to be most perplexing and quite scary because I had no intention of manipulating anyone or of wanting anyone to become dependent upon me. I was faced with two choices – to learn how to do all of this in a way that was somehow directed and owned by those in need, or get out of the field. I got out. I dropped all ties with the groups, with the psychology department, with the communications classes – everything. I went back to my world of science, technology and mathematics.
At about the time that I first encountered the interpersonal communications professor, I also encountered two other influences that were to remain as central features of my life. The first was meditation. I attended a lot of talks by traveling gurus, listening to a wide range of metaphysical discussions until I found a simple technique called Transcendental Meditation (TM), which gave me a tool to help learn about my own mind. I have used this meditation technique or variations on the same, for almost fifty years – sitting in meditation virtually every day of my adult life. The second was a series of books by Carlos Castaneda concerning some very weird experiences that he claims to have had with a Yaqui sorcerer, both with and without the assistance of “power plants.”
I decided to try to duplicate the experiences that Castaneda described, but without using the plants. It is much easier to have a “vision” with hallucinogenic substances than it is without their assistance. However, then the visions seem to be “false” in some important way. Instead of using hallucinogenic substances to achieve visions, I have attempted to learn how to quiet my mind and “observe” what is happening in the hopes of catching glimpses of another “reality.” Many of the stories in this book are the results of these attempts. (I recently found out that Castaneda only used the power plants during the initial phase of his apprenticeship to don Juan. He quickly stopped using them because they were too disruptive and not necessary.)
These practices have resulted in my learning to pay much closer attention to my mind, and to events happening in the world around me. I spent many years perfecting the practice of being “an observer” – observing the world and myself without judgment or interpretation.
When I was about 45 years old I came across a group of “sorcerers” from the same tradition as Castaneda’s Yaqui friends, which is actually a continuation of Toltec traditions. The leader of this group is Miguel Ruiz, a practitioner and teacher of an ancient Toltec spiritual path. I discovered that one of Ruiz’s students lived near my home, and decided to do whatever I could to learn from him. At first I was unsure of this teacher, but decided to commit one year to doing whatever was suggested and see what would come of it. That was more than twenty years ago, and I am still at it because it was far more powerful than I could possibly have imagined. Many of the stories that are in this book come directly from my encounters with this teacher, a wonderful group of like-minded fellow travelers who live close to my home, other “Toltec” practitioners in Northern California, and don Miguel Ruiz and his party of apprentices and teachers from around the world.
All of this has left me with a rather unique view of the world. I am a scientist and engineer, I am a Buddhist meditator, and I am a dedicated practitioner of an ancient verbal tradition arising near modern day Mexico City. These practices have all joined to allow me to simultaneously suspend dis-belief in what I experience, and to know that everything that I experience is internal – there is no “there” there. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a reality – obviously there is. However, I know that I am picking and choosing what I see, what it means, and how it affects me. As Ruiz says, I see everything as if in a smoky mirror. The image that I see is me. The stories in this book are examples of what we can see, and what we can experience, if we learn to stop blocking things out. If we just relax and observe what is “out there” and “in here” – our world automatically opens to a vastly different and more interesting place. If we stop judging, we can start loving. If we stop making assumptions, we start seeing. If we stop forcing our view upon the world, we can start seeing the world. As the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön teaches, there is no such thing as a true story. I don’t know if my experiences described in this book are “true” in some fundamental way, or not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe there is no way to know because our lives are a mixture of the real and unreal – all day, every day.
