A Scientific Mystic Searches for Extended Perception

by James F. Andris

Personally published using Calibre © 2025

Please acknowledge any significant use.

Publisher's Description

The 1980s contained the New Age cultural movement, in which people explored a frontier of non-conventional expressions of spirituality and extended perception. This journal covers a two year period of Jim Andris’ exploration of this frontier and documents his own validation of the existence of such a domain. He is brought back to the hard reality of the AIDS crisis and has to give meaning to some severe personal losses it brings into his life.

About the Author

James F. "Jym" Andris, is emeritus professor of education at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a lifetime pianist and composer, and an LGBTQ community historian in St. Louis. His websites are at jandris.ipage.com.

Preface

Chapter by Chapter Synopsis

Ch. 1: Thinking about Writing a Book

Ch. 2: God and the Two Modes of Knowing

Ch. 3: How It All Got Started

Ch. 4: Co-creating Reality with God

Ch. 5: Eight for a Date

Ch. 6: Back to the Present

I. Don Busch, Jr.

II. Byron Davidson

III. Don Busch, Jr.

Ch. 7: Precognition

Ch. 8: The Dark Decade

Ch. 9: Letter to Rev. Chapman

Ch 10:Dreams

Ch 11: Do we share past lives?

Past Life Regression of Jim Andris by Sheila Dugan

Ch. 12: The Harmonic Convergence/Letter to Ruth Hanna

The Harmonic Convergence

Letter to Ruth Hanna

Ch. 13: Death

Afterword

References

Appendix

Preface

I’ve been a writer for much of my life. I didn’t start writing about my life, though, until relatively late. Much of my early writing was related to music, since I started writing songs when I was a teenager. I left Indiana University in 1970 having completed all but my Ph.D. dissertation, and started teaching at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. When my work there required me to write, it tended to result in research papers in my chosen fields of philosophy of education and instructional technology, the occasional boring program evaluation or other institutional report, or supplemental teaching materials—one of my students back in 1985 said to me “You make the best handouts I’ve ever seen.”

My life in the fifteen years between 1970 and 1985 was not restricted to academic activity, and it was far from boring. I played keyboard in at least five pop, rock and jazz bands, and co-founded one successful area top-forties cover band, Cold Harbor, in the early 1970s. My keyboard skills were constantly in demand to the point that I had to make a self-conscious decision not to leave my chosen profession as a professor of education. I came out in the early 1970s and launched a couple of important campaigns. I was determined to find a man to share my life with, or die trying, and I was determined to bring the topic of gay rights out of the closet at my place of work, SIUE. My extracurricular activities added much spice to my life at the time. I had several significant, but not long-lasting affairs. I became the campus queer, being alternatively praised and scorned in a time when the word “queer,” itself, was still in the closet.

My very most important activities in this period, however, can be loosely grouped under the category “spiritual development.” I was, in effect, introducing various spiritual points of view into my life because in fact there was a spiritual void in my life at the time. Before I decided to take the M.A. in philosophy of education in 1964, years of scientific study and a couple of years assisting research into high-strength steels had led me to an agnostic viewpoint that was also rather deterministic in nature. I also saw my emerging homosexuality as misfortune, rather than as a blessing. But gradually, and due to a series of dramatic changes that got introduced into my life, I began to develop a fresh new view of the world that included the miraculous, the magical, the mystical, and the majestic.

Pretty close to the quattuordecennial anniversary of starting my teaching position at SIUE, my life of exploration was to come screechingly to a halt, or rather be forced onto a radically tangential path to the one I had been on. I had given up the idea that my life was going to include any kind of long-term romantic attachment, when one Stephen L. Nichols showed up at my door one day in the Fall of 1984 and began a tireless campaign to enter into a permanent relationship with me. No one before Stephen had been so pointedly determined to win me over, and in a few months, he did. Over a period of 27 years that relationship evolved through buying a condo together, helping to raise Stephen’s daughter, Stephanie, having a church blessing, getting a civil union, and when the State of Illinois caught up with the Episcopal Church, becoming a legally married couple. After that, it continued to evolve into retirement. I gradually became his caregiver, and eventually Stephen died in 2023.

It was in the relatively calm and peaceful waters of Stephen’s and my committed relationship that around 1987 I began to reflect on and write about what I considered to be quite an interesting life: my life. I decided to write a book with no other purpose that to record a coherent journal of my, really, lifelong attempt to comprehend a world that seemed to me to have a spiritual dimension to it. I got about six chapters into the book and then the settled quality of my life got interrupted by the consequences of the AIDS crisis of the middle 1980s. I wrote a few more short pieces trying to wrap this new frightening and unsettling aspect of my experience into what I already had been expressing, and then I simply stopped writing on that particular piece. Later on, I was to write two more autobiographical books which I also hope to publish.

I have decided to present this book to the public, despite my reservations about the quality and completeness of the writing. It was my first systematic attempt to write a book, and it covers events that transpired between 1987 and 1989. One principle subject of the book is the relationship that developed, or in some instances, did not develop between Byron Davidson and myself, James F. Andris. For nearly 20 years Byron was an instructor of literature, media and philosophy at Belleville Area College, now Southwestern Illinois College at about the same time that I was starting a career in philosophy of education and educational technology at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Our relationship was extremely complex and difficult. Byron was a transformative influence on me, while it seems that I was mostly an annoyance and an impeding factor for him. He was essentially to be a mentor for me as I struggled on several fronts: developing intimate relationships with men, finding my place in St. Louis gay culture, seeking to explore the magical and intuitive dimension of human experience, and navigating our way through academia as openly queer professors. Byron and I also had our own individual battles with sexual addiction and substance abuse. Finally, though we both were profoundly rocked to the core throughout the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, I survived, and he did not.

I am equally concerned in this book to look back on my past and explore how it has happened that despite my education as a conventional scientist, and indeed, my continuing respect for science as a tool for human improvement and a foundation for democratic government, I have striven mightily not to leave out this parapsychological and spiritual dimension of my life. Consequently, there are chapters on my peer group from high school and on my “dark” decade of starts and restarts in which I was exploring various subjects as a student.

If the Universe sees fit, I fully intend to release at least the other two autobiographical books that right now are essentially written but as yet unpublished. But for now, I have concluded that there is much to recommend the reading of this book, despite its glaring deficiencies as a piece of literature. The book contains a systematic attempt to elaborate my experience of a controversial dimension of human existence: what it is like to experience a world that is connected in meaningful, yet unexplained ways, and moreover, to set out to explore such a world by allowing leading, synchronistic events a prominent place in forming one’s goal seeking behavior.

In the 1980s there was a minor cultural movement in the USA towards so-called New Age ideas and practices, and I was fully in the embrace of that movement during the 1980s and also connected to the St. Louis metaphysical community of the time. I was recently reminded that my zeal to understand and explicate this alternative way of seeing things had even made it into my professional life at that time. I was asked to and did present a paper at the April, 1983 annual meeting of the American Humanistic Education conference held in Phoenix; my title was “Planetary Metaphysics and Education.” In 1982 I also shared my perspective with the readers of The Gay News Telegraph in the article “ERA, Homosexual Rights, and the New Era.” Copies of these articles are online.

Because it will no doubt raise questions for some readers, I offer this explanation of my use of the name “Jym” to refer to myself. My birth and legal name is James Fernand Andris, and for most of my life I used the nickname “Jim.” In the last decade of my life, I had reason to more deeply explore what I believe to be true, that I am not only a gay male, but in some sense a trans individual who cannot properly be classified as male or female, i. e. I am nonbinary. And so the name “Jym” which I mostly use now in referring to myself is a reminder of this fact. Yes, my pronouns are he/him, and that is how I mainly present my gender. But this is no ordinary “Jim.” I am beyond the binary, and have written extensive blog posts about my situation.

Chapter by Chapter Synopsis

Jym introduces himself and a cast of friends, who have gathered together to celebrate a feast at Easter, 1987 at Jym and Stephen’s home. Sheila, an experienced metaphysician, debates with Tom, a dedicated skeptic, about whether there is extrasensory perception. Sheila and Jym give several examples of extrasensory perception to Tom, but he resists them all. The chapter concludes with a description of how Jym materialized a desire through taking advantage of a synchronistic event, and how Tom opens up just a little to a new possible way of seeing things.

Jym describes a couple of his mystical experiences which caused him to profoundly reorganize his thinking. He discusses how we can know God. Science cannot help us know God, because science deals in regularities. What puts us more on a path to know God is for us to explore our uniqueness. Knowing God is analogous to getting to know personally a dear friend. We get to know our friends through personal interaction and conversation, so we must learn how to interact and to converse with the one God, the maker of our experience. Jym lists four approaches to this: role-playing, mystical or peak experiences, synchronicity, and through actually hearing words with a divine imprint. Of course, a logical fifth approach is through prayer.

Jym recalls his unique upbringing and background that led to his being open to exploring a relationship with God. Before him, no one in his family had entered college. On his mother’s side, cards and other methods were sometimes used for fortune-telling, and there was a belief in premonitions and tokens or signs. Both sides of the family were steeped in versions of Christianity, Catholic and Lutheran. Both parents were disposed to read the Bible in order to determine God’s will for us and to consider other assessments of these matters, e.g. my father faithfully read The Watchtower for many years. On the other hand, Jym was quite attracted to the scientific thinking he found in various courses of study being offered in the public schools of Marietta, Ohio, and so he lived for a time as an agnostic. Jym’s gradual discovery of his alternative sexual orientation and gender identity also lead to his doubting the stories he was hearing about God’s will for him.

Jym describes in detail conceiving of a specific goal (eceiving two good quality carpets for his living room and dining room, one of them emerald green), and then turning it over to the Universe with the confident but unattached belief that it will be achieved. He then specifies four conditions which he has found are necessary for this to work: true need, confident willingness, state of faith, and non-attachment. But he cautions that his is just one relationship with divine potential. Finally, Jym sketches a rather amusing portrait of him dancing with Everything.

Jym describes how eight uncertain teenagers, three boys and five girls, bonded together into a support group for each other. Once the bond was formed through parties and trips, Willard, Jim and Mariam pushed the group in new directions by constructing fantasy events in which some of the members of the group played a joke on other members of the group. There was a car hijacking, a murder mystery, and finally a UFO hoax that went wrong. These adventures were experimental proving grounds for learning how to manipulate people and ideas, and for learning lessons on the limits of such manipulation. And so for would-be metaphysicians, learning to discriminate between hoaxing and co-creating reality becomes a crucial skill.

So far in this book, Jym has been developing the theme of how one lives a life in which there is a dimension where the future is created in part through intuitively linking with people, events, and even with the entire Universe, thought of as an actor and creator of events. Now he drops the reader into the midst of the mid 1980s AIDS epidemic, where many of his friends are sick or dying. In particular, we are introduced to two symbolic, yet very real, characters. Jym had spent much of the first thirty years of his life hiding or denying his gay and trans self, but had explored and developed gay friendships and gay sexual liaisons for the period between 1972 and 1987, when the book was written. Don is a real person, but also is symbolic of the kind of relationship that developed in Jym’s life when he followed his sexual feelings. Byron is a real person, but represents the kind of relationship that developed in Jym’s life when he followed his metaphysical intuitions about being spiritually connected with other gay males.

In this chapter Jym describes in detail several events in his life which he believes are examples of the phenomenon of precognition, or someone accurately perceiving some crucial aspect of an event which is soon to happen. In one example, he describes a mental image that seems to have been sent by a cat. In a second more complex example, Jym received not one, but two separate “warning” perceptions about events that would happen while he and his partner, Stephen, were ushering at Trinity Episcopal Church. It was as if somehow some part of Jym’s mind was above the sequence of events past, present, and future and coordinating them. Finally, Jym describes the precognitive abilities of a psychic that he worked with for some time in the 1980s, Leitha Hill, who helped him discern both a job opportunity and also uncover a shocking fact about his sexual potential.

Jym graduated from college in 1960, but spent the entire decade of the ‘60s mostly in some course of study or other. He describes his ambivalence in this chapter to dating women, to settling in to this or that occupation, and to completely striking out on his own. The underlying issue was that he was homosexual, but just wouldn’t commit himself to do something significant about that fact. He did manage to acquire a position as instructor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 1970, and it was from that position that he managed to establish authentic directions for himself. A section of this chapter on astrological analysis has been put in an Appendix.

Starting from an early life of illness and struggle with personal identity, Jym gradually had built a life filled with hope and some satisfaction: a promising career and a working spousal relationship with a man. He finds himself suddenly dropped into the midst of the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. Many of his closest friends are affected, and he lives to see them die anything but a peaceful death. Byron has been something of a mentor to Jym, introducing him to new ways of thinking about reality and supporting him through his new adventures as a gay man. But Byron has been episodically self-destructive in his life, and now finds that he has AIDS. He has come home to Trinity Episcopal Church to die. Jym pours out his history with Byron, his struggles to keep him on a healthy path, and his distress at Byron’s continued bad choices in a heart-felt letter to their priest and rector, Rev. William “Bill” Chapman.

Jym has called Byron, whom he suspects has been drinking, to check on him. Stephen has overheard the conversation, and when Jym hangs up, Stephen gives him some very pointed criticism. Jym recounts how off balance this criticism has left him feeling, and describes a range of techniques he uses to regain his balance:using affirmations, countering the criticism with a broader analysis of why he was criticized, applying the concept of knot forgiveness, and using dreams and the analysis of dreams. The chapter is also a snapshot of areas of difficulty in Stephen’s and Jym’s relationship.

This chapter is not well developed; still I include it because it is essential to understanding the next and last chapter I was able to write in 1989. There are three sections: 1) The immediate consequences of my sharing the letter on Byron with Father Chapman, 2) a past life reading in which I was lead to explore a life I supposedly shared with Byron Davidson in ancient Egypt, and 3) my reunion with Byron consequently. The past life reading does not have to have actually happened in order to have therapeutic value in understanding a deeper level of human relationship.

The Harmonic Convergence occurred on August 16-17, 1987. It was supposedly the beginning of a new era and a refocusing of the spiritual energies on earth. It was signified by a certain astrological configuration of planets. Jym’s parents were holding their 50th Wedding Anniversary in Marietta, Ohio coincidentally to the Harmonic Convergence, which was being celebrated at “energy points” all over the world. In St. Louis, the celebration was held at Cahokia Mound in Illinois, and in Marietta, at Conus in the Mound Cemetery. Jym describes first the synchronistic events that lead to his and Stephen’s attendance in Marietta. He then shares a letter to a well-known St. Louis metaphysician and practitioner of the Course in Miracles, Ruth Hanna, in which he describes a miracle that occurred there.

In this final chapter, Jym documents the grim and gruesome death of Byron Davidson, and he addresses the difficult task of giving meaning to the phenomenon. He professes to throw away any pretentious accounts of life after death and to simply look at some possibilities he has developed, being both a scientific-minded person, but also an open-minded person who has considered other possible dimensions of human experience still not well understood or debunked by skeptics. His experience leads him to believe that there a spiritual domain, as so many believe. Many people have had near-death experiences. We do share feelings and thoughts “through the air waves.” We do have intuition and internal compass which guides us. We seem to be here to learn life lessons, despite our resistance. Some of us remember past life connections, or our higher self resonates with other lives. There are techniques for getting around our rational skepticism. The ego probably does not survive death, but there may be other levels of our being that do. Finally, Jym considers the questions, “Do we choose our own life?” and “Do we choose our own death?” And he says goodbye to Byron.

Ch. 1: Thinking about Writing a Book

I keep thinking about writing a book. I go back and forth. My life seems so fascinating to me. Yet sometimes I find that I can't communicate this fascination to others. I feel that my life has a definite meaning and purpose. Yet I think sometimes that I am just supposed to live it; never mind writing about it. And so I go back and forth.

Take today for example. Easter Sunday, 1987. What is left of this day is Stephen setting in the rocking chair, looking at a DAK catalog out of one eye and public television out of the other, a bowl of brightly splashed easter eggs colored by my dinner guests, three pounds of salmon in the refrigerator, and kind of an unfinished longing for something ...

Stephen and I joined Trinity Episcopal Church a couple of months ago. This is high church. Lots of bowing and genuflecting, crossing and kneeling. I mean, these people live The Passion. In my childhood I was doing good to go to church on Palm Sunday and Easter. Here we have a whole week of intense liturgy. Maundy Thursday the church is stripped down to the altar, the crucifix and cross is shrouded in purple, and the lights are turned out. Another service on Good Friday and then an Easter Vigil on Saturday Night.

Stephen is my lover of two and a half years. I love him very much. That is a story that I'm sure I will get around to telling. But for right now, I'll just describe him for you. He's 45, a "mesomorph", as he likes to describe himself, with a compact, muscular body, hazel eyes, and reddish-brown hair and mustache. He has a square face. Stephen is a bit eccentric. He has a habit of asking me questions a lot. Questions that don't matter so much to me. But he has a very good heart. He was married for seven years, has a fifteen year-old daughter, lived then with another woman, and then a man, and then me.￼Group pasted-image.jpeg Caption: Stephen Nichols and Jim Andris 1985 Stephen Nichols and Jim Andris 1985

Stephen and I are academics. I've been a professor for the last seventeen years. I like being a professor. Right now I'm teaching about computer applications in education. I manage a computer lab. It satisfies a certain need for orderly, scientific pursuit which has been with me from an early age. Stephen has taught in special education, but has concentrated on administration for the last several years. By the way, I'm 48, have brown hair and eyes, an “ectomorph”, as Stephen likes to describe me, tall, with long arms and legs. We both look like older leprechauns on occasion, especially when we grin.

My dinner guests today were Byron, Art, Tom, Robert, Sheila, and Kate. We really had quite a wonderful day, despite a grouchy period for me. We started planning for this dinner a month ago. Sheila wanted to be with us for Easter Dinner. She calls Stephen and I her family. I ordered a salmon last week, and we decided to put on a really big “shindig.” Sheila is a voice teacher that I met at SIUE years ago. We have been friends and confidants through good times and bad. Kate is her nine year old daughter. When Stephen came into my life, Sheila and I were able to maintain our intimate connection.

Tom and Robert were really a recent addition to a prayer. Most of my friends from three years back have gradually fallen away during my time with Stephen. I'm really not sure how this happened. But I have prayed for a couple to share with us. Tom and Robert happened to be at Trinity when Stephen and I came. Tom was in our confirmation class. And the four of us have rather shyly but surely become quite close, seeing each other a couple of times a week.

Byron, on the other hand, is probably a principal reason why I am writing tonight. Let's say for now that he was a very important teacher for me (as he reminded me today), and I, in turn, have been a source of comfort for him in time of trouble. I met Byron shortly after I came out in 1974. I perceived him at the time to be a “screaming queen,” but I now know better. We've been through illnesses, adventures, and most importantly, we've influenced each other's spiritual development tremendously.

And so these eight people found themselves gathered around the Easter table about three o'clock today, looking at each other over the beautiful centerpiece Robert had arranged. Robert and Tom had never met Byron, Sheila or Kate. I had some trepidation about how well this gathering would work. It would not be the first time, however, that Sheila found herself surrounded by gay men.

It was a delicious dinner. Stephen had prepared this salmon stuffed with shrimp. I had made an Easter jello mould, creamed peas and onions, and marinated French vegetables. Sheila brought a salad, Art, the wine, and Robert and Tom the dessert, a Baskin-Robbins ice cream pie. Art, by the way, is Sheila's young airline steward friend, who shares a “metaphysical” interest with her. They have given talks together at Seth conferences, and generally assisted each other in deepening their spiritual growth.

Metaphysics is really the subject of this book. Something continues to push me towards communication with the people of this earth about a broader reality than we are accustomed to dealing with. And it was the main conversation at dinner today which highlighted the need for me to do this again. The conversation was spurred by Tom. Tom is a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic. If you can't touch it, poke it, and if 200 average citizens haven't seen it for at least two hours, in short, if you can't put it in the box and take it out unchanged whenever you want it, then he doesn't believe in it. Worse than that. He has taken it as some sort of crusade to question every metaphysical statement that I make.

You say you aren't clear about how I am using the word “metaphysics?” Well, it is indeed a very hard word to define. Of course, it has a long philosophic tradition, and I am somewhat familiar with this tradition. Then there is the current popular sense of the word, having to do with occult and paranormal phenomena and their mastery.

Let me put it this way. My reality has gradually evolved over the last few years to include a range of phenomena that include telepathy, astral travel, lucid dreaming, dowsing, precognitive awareness, and most important, a relationship with God which I have described as “co-creating my own reality with God.” Much of what I say and do is colored by my awareness of a fluid connectedness of past, present, and future events and of all people of the earth. And so I can scarcely say two sentences without this showing.

And when I do make a statement with such overtones, I can feel Tom clutch. His Cancer eyes narrow, and he prepares to pinch me with a challenge to my statements. That's just how this all got started today. I had made some innocent statement about some psychic phenomenon, and Tom had yielded to his compulsion and challenged my statement.

“Sheila,” I said, “tell Tom about what happened the time that I had my heart test.”

This is really the first time that I have tried to involve someone else in the running battle between Tom and me over the nature of reality. Sheila loves this kind of challenge. In a way, I have been her spiritual teacher, leading her from a kind of open-minded curiosity to the point where she is now more “metaphysically” inclined than I am. She leaned forward across the table from Tom, and in a very direct and pointed, yet convivial manner, engaged him with great animation. I have seen her do this before, particularly if she thinks a person is being opaque where psychic phenomena are concerned.

“Ok, but first I just want to say, Tom, that I believe that everyone experiences a psychic dimension. Haven't you ever said something to Robert, and had him say back to you, ‘I was just thinking of that very thing.’”

“But that's just a coincidence.”

“No, I think it's more than coincidence. Or haven't you ever known that Robert was going to call you on the phone, and then he did.”

“But that's because we've grown to know each other's ways.”

Sheila continued with a few more examples.

“I will admit to one kind of experience like this,” Tom said. “Deja vu.”

Several of the guests talked about their deja vu experiences. Then Sheila returned to the point she was making. “I just think that you are denying a very important part of your own mind and capabilities when you don't acknowledge a psychic dimension to your own experience.” Tom steadfastly maintained that there was no such component to his own experiences, even though others might have such experiences.

Then Sheila began to recount the incident that I asked her to share with Tom. But I will instead describe it to you as I recall it. Back in 1980 I was scheduled to go into the hospital because my doctor at the time thought I should have a stress test at my age. Sheila and I were very close at that time, talking on the phone almost every day, and beginning to realize that we were psychically linked. The test was Tuesday morning, but for some reason I hadn't talked to her since Sunday. I had mentioned to her that I would have this test the week before, but had not told her when.

When I got home late Tuesday night, I found a message on my phonemate from Sheila. “Jimmie, where are you. I have this terrible sensation that something bad has happened to you. I had a vision of you this morning wired up to a machine and I saw you falling off of it. Please call me.”Well, it was too late to call that night.

The next day we compared notes. I questioned her very carefully and as near as I could determine, she had this vision of me nearly to the minute that I had the test. She estimated that it occurred at 10:45 and lasted for several minutes. That was in fact true of the test I had just had. She saw wires coming out of my head and chest and that I was on a treadmill ramp which was increasing in speed. Eventually she saw me fall and be helped off of the machine.

Now what actually happened was a bit different. There were no wires coming from my head, only my chest, and I did not in fact fall off of the treadmill. But I did experience quite a bit of fear and distress, so much so that I staggered and stopped. I have always had “trouble” with my heart, suffering palpitations from the time I was 13 years old. And I was frankly terrified that this stress test would reveal something wrong with me. As a matter of fact, much to my surprise, the test was negative.

The point here is not that Sheila was able to accurately access me and my experiences from a distance, but rather that our intimate friendship allowed her to resonate with what I was thinking and feeling, particularly in a time of need or distress, and to a certain extent experience my reality.

When Sheila had finished her account of this incident, I leaned toward Tom and said, “I have literally hundreds of stories like this to tell. For example, let me tell you this one.”

“Back in late December of 1978 I was going with John Marino. We had gone to a movie one night and it was snowing heavily. No sooner had we settled ourselves, when John became quite distressed. He had lost his favorite “pinkie” ring that his ex-wife had given him. He left the theatre, and returned about fifteen minutes later. He still had not found the ring.

“Suddenly, without really knowing why, I said to him, ‘John, I know where the ring is. When we leave the theatre tonight, I will find it for you.’ I could tell that John didn't believe me and thought I was just trying to calm him down so that we could enjoy the movie. I would probably have thought the same thing under different circumstances. But we did watch the movie.

“When we returned to the car, at least four inches of new snow had fallen, making a total of about eight inches. I walked up to a point about three feet away from the car, and stuck my hand straight down into the undisturbed snow. Out came the ring! I was as surprised as John was.”

I might add that John himself was quite a sceptic, and rather poo-poohed my budding astrological and psychic rumblings of the time. But whenever I would wax metaphysical, he would always acknowledge this event. He would say, ’I don't know about all this other stuff, but I do remember what happened [the night of the ring], and that's the way it happened. I can't explain it, but it did happen.’

Like so many in our culture today, this story delighted Tom, not because he received it as evidence of my psychic ability, but because it gave him an opportunity to debunk it. Debunking, of course, consists of finding a possible “scientific” explanation. “Well, you just saw it fall, and remembered where it was.”

“But Tom, why would I not have immediately picked it up for John. And how could I have been so accurate after all that snow had fallen?” As a matter of fact, I do have a memory now of “seeing” a depression in the snow where the ring had fallen, kind of a dark pattern. But John didn't see it in fifteen minutes of searching.

“Let me tell you another story. I had an old friend, Richard Brewer, who was just as skeptical as you are. I told Richard this story about finding John's ring. His curiosity was piqued, for he had recently misplaced one if his favorite rings. ‘If you can find my ring for me, I'll believe it.’

“As a matter of fact, Richard had just moved to a new apartment on Russell Blvd., and I had never been there. I began describing a long, narrow room, and a dark piece of furniture with drawers in it. ‘That would be the buffet,’ Richard said. ‘But I already looked, and it isn't there.’ I persisted in this description, for it was very vivid in my mind, and I also described the ring, which was turquoise. But Richard refused to look, saying he had already thoroughly searched for it there.

“Several weeks later, I received another call from Richard. During the course of the conversation, he said ‘Do you remember my asking you to find that ring I lost?’

‘Did you find it?’

‘Yes,I did, and you know what? I found it in the very place you said I would. I looked more carefully, and it was behind some things I apparently hadn't moved thoroughly enough.’”

After this story, Tom was getting a look that I had seen on his face several times before. It really was an amazing look. His Cancer eyes became deep set, as if he was peering out of a shell. His look said, “I can't call you a liar, but something is wrong here. There has to be another explanation. Either you have reconstructed the facts, or you are deliberately trying to trick me, or you have deceived yourself, or somehow you got the information through natural means. But no way am I going to believe this line of bullshit.”

But there was even more to this look. Because while I could read these conscious thoughts in Tom, I could also read a deeper level of thought, perhaps, unconscious or semi-conscious. “What if this is true. This is terrifying. I can't let myself be pulled into this. It could drive you crazy to live in a world like this.” And I recalled how frightened I was when I first began to plumb the depths of my own abilities. I wondered what would become of personal secrets and privacy in a world where people could read each others mind.

You may wonder why I was so persistent with these stories. Why not just let Tom have his own set of beliefs? Well, I could have, but Tom persists in challenging my beliefs. If we are going to develop a friendship, then he is going to have to find a way to accommodate our disparate realities without making every other sentence an occasion for metaphysical challenge.

But at a deeper level, Tom represents to me one side of our contemporary culture, a side deeply embedded in what I call “the billiard-ball conception of the universe.” It is the contemporary received dogma, comparable to Scholasticism just before the Renaissance. All faith is put in so-called scientific experts. Everything is separated in time and space. Nothing over here can cause or connect with anything over there without visible, audible, tangible physical objects traveling from over here to over there.

And I represent the other side. The side that sees the universe as a hologram. The whole is reflected in each part; each part in the whole. Space and time are illusions, and what is over here now can directly affect what is over there then instantaneously. My conversation with Tom is but a small manifestation of a deeper conversation between East and West, between New Age Metaphysics and Traditional Science.

And so I continued with a final story. This truly is an incredible story to me. In winter of 1983 I was teaching a doctoral level course in Curriculum and Instruction. I had taken it on myself to introduce as one philosophy of education among others the concept of New Age thinking. I had put over a hundred and fifty books on personal reserve, and I had encouraged the members of this class to read at least one book of their choice. In addition, I had strongly recommended that they read Fritjof Capra's Turning Point. In this book Capra, also the author of the widely read The Tao of Physics, presents evidence that many of the scientific disciplines of the Twentieth Century are undergoing a paradigm shift. They are making room for previously unexplained phenomena.

I had just read another book written by a psychologist called The Tao of Psychology. In this book the author elaborates on Freud's concept of ‘synchronicity.’ Freud has his own definition for this concept, but I will give mine here. Synchronicity is when an event occurs in an individual's life which is apparently a chance event, and yet is so monumental in significance that the individual thinks that it surely cannot have been a coincidence. Yet no rational, scientific explanation is forthcoming.

I was informally casting about for an illustration of synchronicity for my doctoral class. I wanted to give them concrete evidence that the universe was connected up in this way. I had such evidence for myself, but communicating it was another matter. I had told the class that I wished that they could have a copy of Capra's book, but that with all the other required reading, I couldn't justify requiring them to buy it. Still, I thought to myself how nice it would be if the universe arranged for them all to have a copy. I certainly couldn't afford the $500 it would have required. I didn't really project for this specific event to happen, but I did believe with all my heart that the universe would arrange some kind of dramatic event for the class.

That weekend, I had arranged to have lunch with an old friend at a St. Louis department store. Gil Fisher had a career as a music teacher for the Missouri School for the Blind. For some reason, Gil was quite late, so I decided to look at the book store which was adjacent to the restaurant. As I was browsing, I noticed several copies of Capra's book in the reduced price section. To my astonishment, they were selling for $2.00 a piece. My heart raced a bit, and I thought that I certainly could afford to buy 20 copies at this price. But I didn't have my checkbook with me. Gil arrived at just this point. I thought to myself that if I really were meant to get a few copies of the book for my class, they would still be here on Monday, when I could return with the checkbook.

Next Monday, I found exactly 21 hard cover copies of this book. They filled two large shopping bags, and I gleefully carried my treasure into the Tuesday night class. I proudly presented my find as evidence of synchronicity. Some were impressed with the evidence, some were merely impressed, I later found out, that a professor would give them a book, and some were not impressed in the least.

Incidentally, I had discovered that one of the 21 books had some kind of illegible scrawl on the page facing the front cover. I had held this copy back, thinking I could use two copies myself. During the break, the class secretly passed the “defaced” book around and autographed it. Some of the inscriptions were quite moving, and I felt a surge of power and love as I read them. It occurs to me now that this is a prime example of “what goes around comes around.”￼Group booksign-1.jpg Caption: The Universe provided my very own signed copy with student appreciations! The Universe provided my very own signed copy with student appreciations!

Weeks later, I was telling this story to Byron, whom you may recall was at the Easter dinner I spoke of earlier. When I got to the part about the illegible scrawl, he said, “Wait a minute. Let me see that book.” He examined the fly leaf, and said with great seriousness, “Do you know what this is? This is Fritjof Capra's signature. I've seen it.”

Now I made this point decisively to Tom. “So the universe had not only arranged for my class to have affordable copies of Capra's book as evidence of synchronicity. It had also arranged for me to have my own copy, autographed by my students, by my loving team-teaching partner, Merrill Harmin, and by Fritjof Capra himself.”

“And I have literally hundreds of stories like this that I could tell you.”

Tom was silent, and I sensed that it was time to let the matter drop. Art had arrived with my book on Gay Astrology, and he and Robert were pouring over it. Astrology is also one of the things that Tom has only criticism for. But now something amazing happened.

For the first time since I have known him, he picked up the gay astrology book and started to read the sections that applied to him and Robert. He read many of the sections out loud, and at one point said, “Boy, he [the author] really nailed us on this one!” I saw a change in behavior, a new openness that I had not seen before. It all reminded me of how I got started on this path of investigating alternative reality in the first place. But that is another story ...

Ch. 2: God and the Two Modes of Knowing

Yesterday while I was making my daily 25 mile drive to the college where I teach, I was beset upon by a mystical experience. I have been subject to these experiences on a more or less regular basis for the last ten years.

This particular day, I had been feeling quite down about my situation. To make a very long story very short, Stephen's job is coming to an end, he has moved tons of stuff into our apartment, and there are money problems. I am a very optimistic person, and usually will not permit myself to stay in negativity very long.

For the first 20 miles, I had been mulling this and that over in my mind: should I take responsibility for sending Stephen’s daughter Stephanie to Europe, how would I make my second music tape, and how would I get Stephen into a more positive frame of mind. Then as I began the drive up Route 157, I determined to put this worry behind me.

Suddenly, the beautiful green and brown checkerboard of fallow ground and spring wheat burst into my awareness. I saw the white lotus blossoms hanging from chartreuse boughs and the rolling land. I smelled the fresh spring air. Tears came to my eyes and I said aloud, “My beautiful green earth, I love you!” I thought of all the songs I had written about the beauty of the earth and the need for peace.

Then, I had that experience which so many mystics have described. I truly felt my oneness with the Earth. I thought, “Now I understand!” I continued to talk: “of course everything is One. The molecules and atoms of my body have been in every place on this globe in the last 2 billion years. I've been a rock, a tree. I am a tree. I feel my oneness with that tree over there.”

This wasn't just talk. I thought of how each atom is nothing but vibrations. We know so little about the fine structure of atoms. For all we know the atoms of which our body is composed vibrate to the frequencies of other objects and people in which they have been. I felt this harmonic resonance and my heart swelled with joy.

And I've certainly had other lifetimes, I thought. I've been every race, sex, and sexual orientation. I remember a few of these lifetimes: Egypt before Christ, England in the 1700s, Louisiana at the turn of the Century.

Then I started to cry, for I felt how very close we are to destroying this beautiful planet and the complicated web of life that covers it. I said aloud, “Please, God, we have to find a way to bring peace to this beautiful earth. I pray and send my positive vibrations in this direction.”

And then it was gone. It was like a spiritual orgasm that swept over me and left me slightly rattled. I had to pull myself together. I continued on my way, and in fact forgot about this experience until just now, 24 hours later.

Again my mind races backwards in time to my first feeble strivings. I was getting a masters degree in philosophy of education back in 1965 when I encountered a reference to Abraham Maslow's book on what he called “peak-value experiences.” I sought out this book and read it from cover to cover. According to Maslow, some people are “peakers.”They regularly have the kind of experience which I just described. I wondered then if I might be a peaker.

It was not until 1975 that I was to have my first full-fledged mystical experience. It was change me to my very core. I had been “out” for about two years, and was beginning, at this late date in my life, to gain a bit of perspective on what it is to be a homosexual male at the beginning of last quarter 20th Century America.

I had met a young man by the name of Jim Burgess at the old Red Bull in East St.Louis. We dated a bit, but ours was to be more of a friendship than a sexual relationship. At that time I was still a total agnostic, and had been so for 17 of my 34 years. We had occasionally discussed a church which he attended, the Metropolitan Community Church. The pastor was a woman by the name of Carol Cureton, and at the time she was packing them in like sardines. They met in an enormous old brick building that had formerly belonged to the Theosophical Society. Jim talked me into going there one Sunday. I was curious, but I was not prepared for what was to happen in the next few weeks. Frankly, I wanted to see what a “gay” church could possibly have to offer. I sat way in the back of the auditorium, which was filled. As I watched these socially oppressed people file forward and take communion, I was overcome by a great longing to participate in this ritual. Yet all my education and reason said that I could not do this. I simply had too much invested in my agnosticism to release it that easily.

After the social hour, Jim and I left the church, but my heart had a strange unsatisfied yearning in it that I could not quell. As it happened, I was in group therapy at the time with a man by the name of Jim McKenna. Jim was an excellent psychotherapist whose main techniques had been developed from those of Eric Berne, Claude Steiner, and the famed gestalt therapist, Fritz Perls. At my next therapy session, I brought up my quandary. He suggested that I have a conversation with God. “Put God out here in the chair and talk to him.” I did. You know the open chair technique. First you be yourself and talk to God, then you switch and be God and talk to yourself. The process gives insight into various parts of yourself. McKenna was of the opinion that I had nothing to lose and should just go ahead and do what I wanted to do.

The result of this conversation was that I gave myself permission to go back to MCC and to take communion with the others. The next Sunday, heart throbbing with emotion and conflicted feelings, I lined up with the others and consumed the bread and wine. As I sat in my seat there in the back of the church, a Holy Presence enveloped me. The room appeared to fill with a misty white light. I had a vision (in my mind's eye) of the Hand of God reaching straight down out of the roof of the building and cradling me. I imagined that I leaned my back against the cupped palm of God's hand and let my legs dangle over his fIngers. An enormous, deep peace settled over me. I was filled with satisfaction, and the yearning which I had felt that week was replaced with a sort of dream state.

This peace was to continue for several weeks. At the time, I simply knew without question that I had contacted God. This experience changed my life. In the next few years I came to understand that what had happened to me was simple to explain. We must be willing to know God before we can know God. I had shown faith “the size of a grain of mustard”and God had responded with a triple whammy!

Naturally, I brought this experience back to my therapy group. One of the things I recall vividly about that night was that Jim McKenna had hanging on his wall a wonderful oil painting of a forest glade illuminated by rays of sunlight. As I sat pondering this painting, I recognized that the painter must surely have experienced the same misty light as I had the previous Sunday. That kind of light does not exist in natural perception not illuminated by the present awareness of God. After that, I saw that such light could be found in many works of visual art, including photography.

I wanted to present these experiences of mine to you as a background for the philosophical discussion which is now to take place. The fact is that here in the U.S.A. we live in a time where, while the majority of people have beliefs and experiences somewhat similar to mine, the received learned tradition and the public media cannot adequately account for mystical experiences. Moreover, there exists an extremely strong drive in the public press and the scientific community to “debunk” as many such reported experiences as possible. So we have a situation where a large proportion of the population is “out of sync” with the media and the academic community.

Now it is not a new idea that science cannot verify metaphysical propositions. Yet I would like to cast this old idea in a new form, because I believe that the matter has not yet been put in quite this way. I want to invite you to follow my argument all the way through without stopping to argue with every premise. Try to understand the way the argument is put together.

Suppose that there is indeed only One God. The entire universe abides in God, its past, present, and future. This includes all the peoples of the earth, the planets, stars, and galaxies. This includes other life forms on other planets, should they exist. Suppose that everything in the universe is connected, and that this connectedness is God. If you can’t suppose this, probably this book is not for you.

Now we have quite a bit of scientifIc knowledge. What distinguishes scientific knowledge is the fact that its conclusions are general, of the form "Whenever you have such-and-such, then you have this-and-this." As soon as a such-and-such is found without a this-and-this, science has to provide an explanation or give up its general conclusion.

But it is logically necessary that science can never know a thing about God. Other philosophers of science have said that this is because the term “God” cannot be given adequate empirical reference. My point is different. Since there is only one God (we are assuming this, remember), science can never get more than one instance for observation. That is, we are constantly observing the One God. We can only add to the particular knowledge that we have of God.

Not only is it impossible for science to validly generalize from this one instance, but also science cannot apply its general knowledge to understanding God. In a way, these scientifIc generalizations describe a regular, uniform aspect of the One God. But since no two people are alike, and since God is One, each of us has a unique relationship to God which cannot be illuminated by general relationships. As long as new, unique people are being born, we will not have seen all the aspects or sides of God.

The most amazing thing of all is that many people want to generalize from the fact that science has nothing to say about God to the fact that there is no God. A similar parallel is found in the strict behaviorists who want to generalize from the fact that they have nothing to say about mind to the fact that there is no mind. However, that there is no God and that there is One God are both metaphysical assumptions, not provable by science.

Part of what I want to do in this book is to convince people that there is a mode of knowing, a non-scientifIc mode, by which we can know God. For now, I'll just make a few points about it. Let me use an analogy. Getting to know God is a bit like becoming friends with a person—only much more complex. Science doesn't really help you understand your friends. It's only when communication has broken down that we turn to psychology or counseling theory to explain what has gone wrong. When things are going well with our friends, we don't want to explain them, we want to share a common life.

The analogy can be carried a bit further. I have many friends who are quite complex. My relationship with them really shows me only a limited side of them. I don't know how many times I have met a friend of a dear friend and been fairly amazed at the new information which I gained by seeing the interaction between my friend and his friend. Each friend that we have brings out a unique side to us, and we to them. And so our shared lifetime becomes a complex web of past, present, and planned-for events. We help each other in life by helping each other create our lives.

Carrying the analogy still further, the major way that we get information about our friends and develop our relationships is through conversation. We talk to each other. We tell each other about our past, frequently talking about how so-and-so did such-and-such to so-and-so, and how they felt about it, whether it was right or wrong. Or we talk about what we saw or did that we did or didn't like.

God is like this. Each creature brings up a different side of God. But unless we communicate with God, we do not become aware of God's influence on our lives. If we didn't know how to talk to other people, we would be severely handicapped, autistic or schizophrenic. I assert that in our society today, there are many people who have theological autism. They do not hear God when God speaks, and they do not know how to speak to God.

Each human life is naught but a conversation with the Divine. And just as we have to learn to get along with people, we have to learn to get along with God. Some people never learn to listen to others, never learn to take subtle cues from their interpersonal interactions. Because of this, they end up in pain or miserable in other ways. Or perhaps they are not miserable, but they are making other people miserable, and they do not care.

Listening to other people is a skill. You have to be silent while the other is talking. You have to really pay attention to what they are saying. You have to care. You have to put yourself in their shoes. You have to “go the extra mile” and actually help them.

Likewise, telling others about your problems is a skill. You have to be objective about yourself, yet subjective enough to sort what you want out from a confusing morass of social expectations. You have to trust other people. You have to be willing to be helped, perhaps by a somewhat different means than you would have liked. You have to have listened to people, for the most part, before they will care about you.

When you can listen to another and tell that other about your concerns, then you have the basis for an interpersonal relationship. And as you build this relationship, you are drawn into each other's lives, and become part of each other's reality. But since people are “self-made” to a certain extent, what this reality is and can be is under the control of the parties involved. It may or may not be under their conscious control. To summarize what we have said in the last three paragraphs: through skilled conversation, people are able to co-create a shared reality.

Finally, conversation and co-creation are skills that cannot be learned in the abstract. They must be practiced with individual people, with Joe or Sally or Reginald or Tandaleo. These skills take time and practice and caring and dedication. They involve you in a more or less complex social circle, and perhaps in several different communities of people, groups with shared common assumptions.

Now guess what I am going to talk about! Yes, conversation and co-creation of reality with God. Let's talk about the minimal requirements for avoiding theological autism: awareness. Yes, you have to create in your mind the belief that you can become aware of God. I can think of several ways in which I have become aware of God. One is perception.

You must remember my hypothesis: there is only the One God. Therefore, perceiving God is not like looking for a needle in a haystack. You know what a needle looks like. You have seen needles and haystacks before, and you would probably recognize them in conjunction. But, you see, there is only the One God. God is not a kind of thing. God is an individual. Whether you realize it or not, everything you have been seeing since you were born is God.

My experience of seeing the green and brown checkerboard fIelds of Southern Illinois and the white lotus trees triggered a perception of God in me. I literally saw my connectedness to the universe. On the other hand, a firm agnostic or atheistic belief on my part would have rendered me theologically autistic. Perception and belief are inextricably bound up. We will not register what we believe to be impossible.

Another way in which we can become aware of God is through what Jung called synchronicity, the occurrence of extremely significant but apparently coincidental events. You may recall my example of buying Fritjof Capra's book for my doctoral class. Here is my account of how synchronicity works. God loves us and wants us to have what we want, all of us. But we are often confused about what we want. We think we want something, but some of our other beliefs imply that we do not want that something. If we give up our striving and trust God, then God will provide the solution, which often we would not have thought of or planned for ourselves. God does this for two reasons, to confirm Their existence to us, and to give us what we want. (I will sometimes refer to God as She and sometimes as He. I will explain this in the course of the book.)

I have already given you an example of synchronicity where God wanted me to have what I wanted: for my students to have Capra's book. Now let me give you an example of synchronicity where God confirmed Her existence to me. I had stopped off at the offIce of Dick Spurgeon, who teaches English at SlUE. In the course of our conversation, I happened to ask him if he knew my friend Byron Davidson. He said that he did, and began to reminisce. Byron had been his student about ten years ago, and had written a piece drawing an analogy between the mass slaughter of the Jews by the Nazis, and the oppression of homosexuals in this country. Dick had thought that the piece definitely should be published. However, another faculty member had violently opposed it, saying that the university community was “not ready” for this kind of writing. Dick concluded by saying that he had given in on this matter, but had always regretted it. At just that moment, I happened to look out the window across the small courtyard and through another window. Who should be standing there at just that moment, looking right at us, than the professor of whom we were speaking.

A coincidence, right? Was it just a coincidence? What if I told you that such coincidences occur to me several times a week? Here's how I interpreted this one. God was holding up this man, showing him to me, in effect saying, “Yes, Jim, I am here. This did happen, just as Dickie said. It's something you should know about, and you should share with Byron.” As a matter of fact, I did share this with Byron. His response: ”I always wondered why that happened. Now I know.” Which illustrates a third way that we can become aware of God—through God's actions in the lives of other people as they testify to us.

A fourth way that we can become aware of God is through his actual words. Here is a story that will illustrate how this happened to me. I was attending a two-weekend workshop given by Fred Allen Wolfe, a “visionary physicist,” as he describes himself. The workshop was quite fascinating, although I had felt some unspoken negative vibes from Fred that I never quite fIgured out. At any rate, that is not important. At the time, I was curious about mental telepathy. During a question and answer session, I asked Fred if he knew of any books which had scientifically investigated the phenomenon of mental telepathy. He replied that there was an excellent book by Targ and Puthoff about remote viewing called Mind Reach.

Well, I began to search for the book. One of the things I have prided myself in as an academic is my ability to use library resources effectively. So I began in my typical academic style, looking in card catalogs, calling area libraries. Now it was Tuesday, two days later, and I still had not found a copy of the book. Suddenly, I said to myself, “Look, you know that the Universe will bring this book to you if only you will trust it. Why don't you just turn this matter over to the Higher Intelligence and go on about your work?” As a final capstone, I said with conviction, “I'll have that book, and have it read by the start of the second week of workshops with Fred.”

A day went by without my thinking of the matter further. Then on Thursday, I started my 25 mile drive from St. Louis to SlUE. At the turn-off to 157 (it occurs to me now that there must be something magical about that particular point) I felt a strong urge to turn right instead of left and go shopping at St. Claire Square. This surprised me, because I am not a shopper by nature. But I said to myself, “No, absolutely not. You have two student appointments this morning, and you have to meet them.”

As it turned out, neither one of the students showed up, which irritated me a bit. But, optimistic as I am, I decided to use my time productively. I took Fred Allan Wolfe's book out of my briefcase and continued reading it. Then, crystal clear, yet in my mind's ear, I heard a voice say, “Call B. Dalton Books at St. Claire Square.” Instantly, I recognized that God was telling me where I would find my copy of Targ and Puthoff. I got the phone directory, made the call, and said to the salesclerk, “This is Jim Andris at SlUE. Do you happen to have a copy of Targ and Puthoff’s Mind Reach?”

“As a matter of fact, I think we do have it. I just saw it. Let me go check to be sure,” she replied. After a minute she returned. “Yes, we have just one copy left.”

“That copy was intended for me,” I replied. “I'll be there in 25 minutes if you'll hold it for me.”

This is one of the few times that I have actually heard the words of God. Or maybe they weren't his actual words. Maybe he was just broadcasting a Divine thought on my bio-receiver. But the point is, I got the important message, and I got it through auditory feedback.

A second minimal requirement for the avoidance of theological autism is willingness. In fact, even though they are logically separate, willingness and awareness are quite inextricably bound up together as conditions for knowing God. Similarly, the pistons and the carborator in a car are logically separate, but the car won't move without both. One can see the components of willingness and awareness in all of the anecdotes which I have related to you so far. In all but one of them, willingness and awareness were working together. In the case of my major mystical experience, it is clear that my unwillingness to believe in God was working against me. I hated to admit that my seventeen and some years of proselytizing against belief in God could have been a mistake.

In another chapter, I will tell you about a side of myself that has been a great barrier to knowing God, which I have labeled sinabism. “Sinabism” stands for Sexual INtimacy ABuse. Very concisely put, the form of sinabism I have involves using an object of sexual attraction to deal with perceived flaws in the self. I have always had a great “need” to be told how good I am, and I have always felt inadequate as a man. In a loving relationship, this inadequacy can become a bottomless dry well which no shower of compliments could satisfy. Then I can become unreasonably demanding of attention, which has the exact opposite effect: my loved one starts to avoid me. The situation spirals, and the romance collapses.

One of the things I have learned about myself from being in many such relationships is this. When I am in the middle of such a situation, my perception of the loved one becomes hardened into negativity. I become convinced that I am being ripped off, and obsessed with thinking about the way I am being denied what is rightfully mine. Fortunately, therapy, experience, and my own love of God has made me aware of this self limitation. Yet despite this awareness, when I am into my “number,” I am very unwilling to stop. It is as if my mind, will, and perceptions are cycling in a very narrow way, and they have an inertia of their own.

Once, when I was visiting a lover of mine in Kansas City, an older gentleman who taught at a small college and had seven university degrees to his credit, I found myself in this bitchy state. The more I demanded of Merrill, the more he responded with negativity. The situation was seriously deteriorating. I slept by myself that night. In the morning, I said to myself: “Jim Andris, you are doing your number once again. You are bringing this onto yourself. Now you are going to stay in this room until you can come out and be a loving human being.” I was really angry with myself. While I was in that room, I prayed with all my might that Jesus Christ would come and be in my heart and replace the cynicism and vile feelings that had accumulated there.

I rehearsed in my mind how it is that one is loving. I certainly didn't want to be loving. The part of my will that was under the control of this negative pattern was set in a destructive motion. But another part of my will, quite feeble, was under the control of the new thought patterns, started in therapy, and nurtured by my belief in God.

The first thing that I did when I came out of that room was to go up to Merrill, and as if I were in a play, but with all the imagination I could muster, I threw my arms around him and asked him how he had slept. Well, his reaction was immediate. He hugged and kissed me back, and said how glad he was that I was feeling better. He smiled and I smiled. The rest of our weekend together was wonderful.

I hope by my story above that I am able to make this point. Some of us get trapped in equally negative patterns where God is concerned. Somewhere along the line we developed a negativity to the idea of God. Maybe we looked at the mistakes of organized religion and blamed God for them. Maybe it was the Nazi death camps that convinced us that there could be no loving God. From this negativity, our will becomes set. Then, after a time, no matter how hard God would try, we would not be willing to hear Him speak.

I can only plead with such people as might read this book that they learn from my mistake. That they at least develop a willingness to see another side of reality: the Holy side. If they do develop just the slightest bit of willingness, then will come the awareness. For I believe that if only we pay attention with a willingness to perceive God, then we will perceive God.

When awareness and willingness are set on the object of the One God, we have a human being at the beginning of a spiritual path. It is at that time that the third minimum requirement for the avoidance of theological autism can begin to be in place: belief. Once we are willing to experience God in our lives, and once we begin to have such experience, then we begin to weave these extraordinary events into a web of belief which helps us to comprehend what is happening to us.

Whether or not a human being believes in the One God, he or she goes through life trying and undergoing, acting and perceiving, and building a complex web of beliefs that make sense of experience as it occurs to him or her. That is part of being human. Ultimately, whether or not God factors into the experience of that human being depends on whether he or she can learn to meaningfully apply the category of ‘God’ to experience. If we do not make a place for God in our lives, then They will not be in our lives. And if we do not believe in God, then we will not make a place for Them. It is as simple as that.

And so I come to this final summary of what I have had to say in this chapter. My life is filled with God's presence. Yet I am by no means a saint, not even aspiring to be one. I daily see my serious human limitations. I'm just one more unique, frail human being “tryin’ to do the best I can.” I've come a long way. I've come from the depths of scientifIc skepticism to the heights of mystical experience. I've come from the bitter vetch of addictive relationships to the challenge of cooperative, accepting relationships.

I've only done this because I have changed my own reality. I have recognized the impotence of the scientifIc method to illuminate my personal relationship with God. I have opened my eyes, my heart and my mind, and set my will to be changed. And I have changed. I'm still changing. I have a long way to go, and I won't be perfected when I reach the end of my life. Perhaps by telling how I got from there to here, and how I plan to get on with my life, I can present a reality pattern that will help someone somewhere. I hope that someone is you.

Ch. 3: How It All Got Started

This is to be a spiritual autobiography. I don't want to spend a lot of time developing a story of my early life at this point. Furthermore, I am not just telling about myself for the sake of permanently recording the events of my life. Something is telling me that people could use this book as a guide to their own spiritual development, although the paths they create might be quite different from mine.

There are a very few things in my early life that I need to tell you, however, because they do set the stage. I would say at this time that I had a fairly good childhood, although there were periods when I believed that my life was terrible. I was born on December 3, 1938 in Marietta, Ohio, a small county seat. I was to spend 21 years there.

My mother was clearly the most significant person in my early life. She loved me, she was proud of me, she listened to all my problems, and she gave me the permission to be who I was. If there is anyone other than God and myself who can take credit for the success I have had, it is my mom. Mom was Ella Lorene Sullivan Andris, and after her grandmother, Eva, died in 1951, her mother, Clara, came to live with us. You could say that I was raised by these three women, with my father usually providing background support but occasionally doing things that hurt me.

“Grandma Noe,” mom's grandmother, was a sweet old German lady from a family of six boys and six girls, most of whom were given to long life. She taught me to look at pretty flowers in the garden when I was very young. I also was fascinated by her crocheting. “Grandmother,” mom's mother, was very special to me, but she was quite eccentric. She had “liver problems,” and in many ways was quite childlike and temperamental. It has been suggested that I have a bit of her temperament.

These three women and I played cards all through my childhood and into my teens. Canasta was the main form of recreation in our family. Mom and dad also played poker with their couple friends. A third way that cards were important was that in our house, both mom and grandmother told fortunes. I loved to have my fortune told, and eventually became quite good at it myself. I can see in retrospect that it is because of these early experiences with fortune telling that I became open-minded to the possibility of clairvoyance.

My dad and I never seemed to hit it off. He was born Fernand Andris, a tough first- generation Belgian street kid. He was a self-made man who never finished 9th grade. At different times he was a grocer, a real-estate man and a building contractor. He had been a very successful athlete. We always had good food and a comfortable beautiful home. Dad loved to fish, and to be truthful, he had a terrible drinking problem which he never conquered until the last few years. Also, he resented grandmother living with us, and she in tum was quite down on him. There was a lot of competition for affection in our home.

When I was six and a few months old, my brother Tom came along, and then when I was nine and a few months, my sister Vicki. I'll have more to say about them later. For now, let me note that we were all musical. I competed with my brother during my early teens, but as he grew up, we developed more and more a friendship based on musical sharing (he played the saxophone and sang) and common intellectual interests. Vicki, Tom, and I still sing and play songs whenever we get together for family gatherings.

When dad was sober he was good enough. He took us to the open air theatre often, and we went on long auto trips to places like Vermont and Florida in the summertime. When we did, we often sang old standard songs in three-part harmony. At first he read to us from the Bible, although we never attended church. But then his drinking became more of a problem. I could dredge up a few horrible incidents and report them. Yet I have to admit that the worst thing about dad's alcoholism was the constant state of low-level fear that we all lived in, waiting for his next drunken episode to come along. One thing about our house, birthdays and Christmas were big events. No expense was spared. Our parents showed their love through their generosity. Especially my dad, because he didn't always express it in other ways.

From the beginning I was to be a sensitive and talented child. My mother tells the story that when I was three years old, she was in the kitchen washing dishes. She heard someone playing "The Three Little Kittens" on the piano. She went into the room, thinking that a neighbor lady, Marie Gibbs, was playing, only to discover that it was me. Everyone was amazed except for me. I just kept on playing for the rest of my life. I had a few lessons, but truthfully, my ability to play the piano was a gift. When I was about nine years old, my piano teacher, Mrs. Foulke, had brought another woman to hear me one week, because she was so impressed with my playing. I was surprised by this, and quite nervous, but I jumped up on the bench and tore into my piece for that week. When I was finished, I could see that my piano teacher was upset with me. A strange look was on her face.

"James," she said, "you played that whole piece in G and it was written in C. How did you do that?"

"Gee, Mrs. Foulke, I just did what I always do. I listened to you play it last week. I guess I forgot to check the beginning note. "

So there I was at nine with the ability to learn a short piece, chords and all, in one hearing. Not only that, but I could transpose it too. I discovered that I had "perfect pitch."

I learned to play ragtime piano from a neighbor, Ruth Spriggs. She and her second husband, Leo Inbody had me playing in their band by the time I was thirteen. All through high school and college I played in various bands on the weekends, and earned quite a bit of pocket money. I also learned a lot about the realities of life on these "gigs." These young eyes saw illicit affairs, dope and lots of boozing. But mainly, I loved to make music. I was having a good time.

In school I believed that I was not a success as a boy. I have never quite recovered from this. I went to a tough school, yet I was terrified of getting in a fight. I hung around with the girls.

I remember one time in the fifth grade, my dad decided that I should learn to play basketbalL Just getting through the physical exam was difficult enough. I was very shy. But the worst was yet to come. The boys always fought over who would have to take me on their side. They finally developed a deal where they would take turns ignoring me. So one day, I was off to myself on the court, and the ball carrier saw that I was unguarded. He threw the ball squarely at me. Of course, I dropped it, fell on my butt, and started to cry. The coach took my father aside and suggested that I might better spend my time another way. One more disappointment for dad, one more humiliation for me.

Yet in class, I always knew the answer. At various times in my life, my IQ has tested out at around 160. I loved learning. What I loved the most was math and science. I wanted to learn everything I could about the physical world. The social world was a different matter. It would be a long time until I felt good enough about myself to explore people with any degree of self-confidence and awareness.

There were other things in my life that predisposed me later to metaphysics, although there were many years when I totally repressed this part of me. For one thing, mom, grandmother and grandma all believed in premonitions, signs, and tokens. There was the belief that deaths came in threes. Another one was that a sparrow on the window sill could foretell a death. I was not certain about the legitimacy of any of this.

I do recall one incident that I have never forgotten. Grandma Noe had been on her deathbed for a few weeks. She had in fact been bedridden for at least a week. The family were all downstairs listening to TV. In better days grandma had had a way of coming down the stairs that was unique. Instead of using the bannister, she would always walk down the other side of the stairs and slide her hand along the wall for support. As a result, we could always hear her coming by this sliding sound. As we sat there, suddenly there was the sound of grandma coming down the stairs. Mom heard it first, but we all could hear it. We ran out in the hall, because we were afraid she'd falL But grandma was still in bed, asleep. She died two days later.

Another thing that set the stage for my later experiments with parapsychology was the interest of my mom and grandmother in dream interpretation. There was always a great deal of breakfast talk about our dreams and what they meant. Grandmother had bought an old Zolar dream book which had very specific meanings for dream symbols.

Finally, there was the fact that mom and dad were both religious. My dad had been a Bible student, reading the Watch Tower and the Dawn, both fundamentalist exegeses of the meaning of Biblical passages. Dad had an old copy of the Bible completely marked in pencil. There was no passage that he could not find. My mother, on the other hand, was not so precise in her search for God. Many times she made remarks that I questioned. But still, her intention was clearly to live a good, Christian life. She read the Bible, and was forever talking about living the faithful life.

Both mom and dad believed in Bible prophesy. They always told us children that the “latter days”were at hand. We got read to out of Revelations quite a bit. Every time some war or famine would occur, mom would informally quote the Bible's “wars and rumors of war” statement. We heard about the Beast, 666, and were told this was Hitler. Still, for all this, dad really didn't believe in an after life. “When you're dead, you're dead!” he used to say.

Mom and dad argued a lot about a lot of things. She had a tendency to want to explain everything either scientifically or theologically, and the explanation was more important to her than its truth. Dad would always make cynical wisecracks about these remarks. “How do you know, Red?” he would say. She, in turn, always got her feelings hurt by these critical comments by “Squee.” But they stayed together, and they are still together fifty years later. I think that deserves a round of applause.

As I think about it now, I realize that something interesting happened to me as I grew older. The ideas that we can predict what will happen, and that the universe sends signs to us about forthcoming events are kind of exciting. That our dreams have a hidden meaning is kind of fascinating, too. I really liked the idea of a universe with these qualities. On the other hand, what I was learning in school, and in part what my abilities and interests there were preparing me for, was that the universe was regular and orderly and that there was no Supreme Intelligence that had organized things. My science books all presented quite dry accounts of natural phenomena. My mind could not hold both these belief systems in place at the same time.

So as I grew older, I began to question more and more the things I had heard from my mother and father and my grandmothers. I became quite addicted to reading science fiction about the time that I was fourteen. Lying on mom's blue velvet couch, reading Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury, listening to Errol Garner, and drinking a Pepsi was my idea of heaven. Apparently, science fiction, since it was an extension of unexplored aspects of reality, permitted me to experience an exciting possible universe, while not causing the cognitive dissonance of these earlier beliefs.

In my case, the charges of the fundamentalist is true. The state-supported schools which I attended were fostering in me a metaphysics of secular humanism. I was more and more convinced that belief in God and supernatural powers was not based on any scientific evidence and was just superstitious nonsense.

I have told you a bit about my music and my intellectual pursuits. I definitely want to come back later on and write a chapter on a wonderful group of high school friends that I found. But there remains one important aspect of my life that I must now tell you about: my homosexuality.

Between the ages of five and eleven I did some exploring with boys. I understand that this is quite common. But there were some definite differences in me. I will tell you a story that still makes my hair stand on end. When I was about five my father decided one day that he was going to make me eat a sandwich with onions on it. I now think the man was honestly concerned about what he saw as my feminine tendencies, and was doing what he thought necessary to correct them. I hated onions, in fact, they always made me sick to my stomach. He, of course, loved them. So we proceeded with this experiment in mental cruelty. As soon as the onion hit my mouth I gagged and lost the sandwich. This infuriated dad. I don't clearly remember all the events, but I definitely remember ending up on my mother's lap screaming and crying, “I want to be a girl! I want to be a girl! I want to be a girl!” My memory also tells me that mom said to me, in her distress, “Now, Jimmie, you just have too many female hormones. We'll just take you to Dr. LaBarre and have him cut the excess ones out.” Mom denies that she said this.

Decades later I was to recall this incident in connection with another agonizing fact about my life. When I was about fifteen, my breasts began to enlarge. Even the nipples began to look like girl's nipples. I tried my best to hide it, but one day, with tears in my eyes, I exposed my budding breasts to my mother. She was immediately overcome with empathy and said, “Oh, Jim, I never realized that you had such a problem.” The dear soul even made me a chest binder that I could wear.

I went for a while to Dr. Seidell, who tried male hormones on me. They did succeed in triggering the onset of puberty, but the breasts remained intractable. Finally, they took me to Dr. LaBarre. It was determined that I would have an operation on November 6, 1954. Two weeks after the operation, my father took me back to the doctor, and took my younger brother Tom into the room with me. When the bandages were removed, I was horrified to see two huge six inch scars. The worst part was that the doctor had simply cut the nipples out. It was years before I would ever appear in public without a T-shirt on. Decades later my brother recalled this incident to me with pain.

The point of this story is this. Just a few years ago, I put all these events together and asked myself the following question: “Had some sick part of my personality first created these breasts because of its uncertainty about the appropriateness of my sex assignment and, worse, had I unconsciously contrived to make my remembered mother's words come true--to have the "extra female hormones cut out”? I don't know. The human being is an amazing thing, and we are beginning to learn just how intimately bound up are the mind, body and spirit.

With the chemically induced onset of puberty, I found to my horror that I was actually attracted to boys instead of girls. It was pretty clear. I lusted after types that I thought I should look like, but didn't. I was always a little chubby and soft and thought I had a little penis. So if a young man was muscular or skinny or especially well-defined, or had a good-size penis, I couldn't take my eyes off him. My heart just pounded. I did a lot of masturbating to these fantasies, and even pulled one off in study halL Afterwards, I went to my next class with my books hiding the wet spot. I also loved to look at the muscle books in my dad's store.

Of course, all this jacking off was accompanied by mountains of guilt. I would always follow an orgasm with a prayer begging God to forgive me, and promising Him that I would never, never, never again do this bad thing. Next day I would go through the same ritual. In subtle ways, it had been made extremely clear to me that homosexuality was perverse and horrible. The town perverts were ridiculed and denounced. All the tough guys called the sissies “fags” and “queers.” I got called a “queer” and a “cocksucker” quite a lot in my youth. So by the time I was sixteen or so, I had decided that I would just not have sex with anyone.

A lot of this is kind of amusing now that I look back on it. I used to catch the semen in a handkerchief and tuck it under the mattress. The handkerchiefs always got washed. I was only kidding myself that I had a secret. There was one book that had a beautiful ex-marine in it. I kept it in a drawer, hidden in my comic books. Every time I would get it out to masturbate, I would later hate myself. One day I logically reasoned out a plan to put this “sin” to a stop. I would masturbate, and then before the desire returned, I would dispose
of the magazine. I actually shredded it and cast it in plaster of Paris!

I made a decision that you couldn't be sexually attracted to your friends. I had two close boy friends in high school, and one of them must surely been an early version of a lover. But I thought that this all was so evil that I denied those feelings toward him. Years later this was to cause me severe problems, because I found it difficult to be attracted sexually to my first lover.

Finally, at age seventeen, the stage had been completely set for my move to atheism. I remember figuring it all out very clearly. God has to be compassionate, I reasoned. A compassionate God wouldn't deliberately make an innocent, good young man like myself a homosexual. But there I was, good, young, and definitely homosexuaL The conclusion was obvious. There was no God. That was my senior year in high schooL It would be another seventeen years before I would let God back into my life.

Ch. 4: Co-creating Reality with God

This may surprise you, but I don't think that I have all the answers. In fact, you'll get more out of this book if you understand that my picture of God is almost certainly not exactly right for you. I'm not trying to tell you what God is like; I'm trying to tell you what God is like for me. If I have anything to say about what God is like in general it is this: God is the process whereby a human being creates a reality. Reality itself is almost completely malleable. What shapes it are the beliefs, experiences, values, willingness and actions of finite beings such as you and me.

To illustrate this point, I want to tell you a story of how I co-created a reality with God. It is the story of how I manifested two rugs for my condominium without paying a cent for them. Before I tell this story, however, you must realize that I brought to this experience a set of beliefs, experiences, values, and actions and a certain kind of willingness. Had I not been the person I was, this event would have never happened to me.

My beliefs had been colored by ten years of reading metaphysical books and treatises on unexplained phenomena. I believed without doubt that miracles occur daily. My values included a love of God and of myself. By 1986, when the event I am about to relate occurred, I had experienced hundreds of small miracles. Finally, I was willing on two levels--willing to allow the universe to provide me with my needs and willing to receive the gifts of the universe without prejudgment.￼

This is the story. In June of 1985 I bought a rather nice and affordable condominium in the Central West End of St. Louis. In January of 1986 Stephen and I had finally managed to get all the boxes unpacked and put away and all the furniture and pictures in reasonably appropriate locations. It looked rather nice. I live in a third floor walk-up. My writing studio overlooks the 26-floor tower of the Chase-Park Plaza Hotel about half a mile away. Down at the corner is a cluster of nice restaurants and shops. There is an avant garde store called Left Bank Books, an exquisite candy shop, antiques and records.

It was the first week of a cold January as I sat at my desk watching the snow fall onto my balcony and enjoying the warmth and coziness of the home Stephen and I had put together. We had been talking about what we needed to complete the place. The most conspicuous absence was rugs for the living and the dining room. Stephen had even commented to me, “I love emerald green! Let's get an emerald green carpet for the dining room someday.”

I thought to myself in just these words, “the universe is going to provide me with just the perfect rugs for this condominium.” And having said this, I put it out of my mind.￼

Early the next week I went to the Majestic for breakfast on my way to work. This diner is a neighborhood hangout where yuppies, gays, retirees and street people sit side by side. The waitresses are down-to-earth, even rough, and friendly. This is one place where everyone comes to catch up on the gossip of the neighborhood. Since quite a few gay men and lesbians eat here, this is a good way to stay in touch folks in the gay community.

As I was leaving, I saw a man, Sid, that I had not seen for years. I stopped to chat, and he and Rif, his lover, invited me to sit down for a bit. We were catching up on what had happened to us. I told them about the new condominium, and how nicely it was coming, and that all we really needed were a couple of good rugs.

"Listen," said Sid. I've got a couple of carpets in my closet that Rif and I need to get rid of. They're perfectly good carpets."

I was a little cautious for a couple of reasons. I could imagine that these carpets were all worn out. Also, Stephen has very definite tastes, and I didn't want to commit to taking carpets that he would be displeased with. So we arranged to get together the next Saturday morning to see if they would be suitable.

By the time Saturday had rolled around, I recalled that I had put it into the universe to provide me with carpets, so I was getting a little excited about the situation. But we weren't prepared for the carpets. They were beautiful and had been scarcely used. I could hardly believe that Sid wanted to part with them. But he did. One carpet was blue and gold with a unique fish bone pattern. It complemented the couch and abstract painting in our living room. The other carpet was thick, plush, and, yes, that's right, the most gorgeous dark emerald green that I had ever seen.

I was still recuperating from a bad back, so these guys even carried these carpets out of the President, a plush high rise on Lindell, and into our place, despite single digit temperatures and inches of fresh snow on the ground. They insisted that a dinner for this kindness would be nice; nothing more than that was necessary.

When the carpets were formally put in place, they were perfect. That February, they invited us to spend a weekend in the Ozarks with them, which we all really needed and enjoyed. After a few months, Sid and Rif sort of fell away from Stephen and me. They moved to the south side, and we used to run into them occasionally at Shaw's Gardens until they went their separate ways.

Now let's look at this experience and try to understand what made it possible. The most important factor, I believe, is my concept of God. I can recall very clearly how I was viewing God. As I looked out over my balcony that day, I saw all the objects of my perceptual field as overlain by a criss-crossing network of lines, a complex invisible web. Each of these lines was connected to a person or an object. Every person and object in the world intersected. At each intersection was the possibility of meeting. I felt that God was at each and every intersection, and was all of them connected.

My perceptual field, as I walked through life, was an interface between God and me and all the other creatures of the universe. I believed that somewhere in the world there were rugs that I could connect with. I believed that, just by going about my life, and doing my necessary tasks, that I would encounter these rugs.

My part in the manifesting of what I wanted was to realize that God (the universe) would provide me with opportunities to realize my dream. My part was to have somewhat unconscious “feelers” out for the possibility of such a crossing. My part was to be ready (willing) to act in a positive manner when and if an opportunity arose.

I often reflect on this: how I used to see the world as a Cartesian grid. Everything in its place, taggable with a mathematical coordinate, and governed by the latest physical laws. How I now see the world as a seething, roiling, flowing mass of colored figures, replete with possibility.

There is an important limitation to this method of manifesting what you visualize. It is not a method that can be tested by a sceptic. First of all, it has to grow out of true need. The situation that I found myself in had an obvious and natural conclusion: that two appropriate rugs be found. There might never again be a time when someone like me needs just two rugs to complete a plan. Second, I had slowly learned how to conjure up this “back of the mind” confident willingness. Third, I had ten years of reading and experience which had led me to a [certain] state of faith and belief.

There is still a fourth important condition: truly, I was unattached to the outcome. Ken Keyes wrote a wonderful book, Handbook to Higher Consciousness, which is required reading if you want joy in your life. One of his central messages is transforming your addictions into preferences. I can honestly say that while I preferred to have those rugs, I was not addicted to having my way. My attitude was, well, they would be a perfect capstone, and if God wants me to have them, I will have them. If they do not manifest, no problem. What is important is my higher good, and I am not always in touch with my higher good. These rugs might be a detriment. But, God, if they are not, and if they do not infringe on anyone else's happiness, then let me have them.

I must add that I sincerely believe that I have everything I need. I sincerely believe that God always gives me what is best for me. I lack nothing. I have learned to rehearse my blessings instead of my burdens. I have learned to bear my burdens as necessary for my spiritual advancement.

Now someone will surely say that this is all poppycock. That I am making much too big a deal about finding a couple of rugs when I was looking for them in the first place. Someone will surely make the point that this is not a particularly astonishing coincidence. Or that maybe I went around asking everyone if they had rugs (I didn't) and they finally turned up. Let me just say that I understand this point of view. I was there. I could be there again.

On the other hand, these people are just the same people who wouldn't recognize a miracle it it was staring them in the face. These are the same people who either are committed to debunking all such reports of “extra-normal” phenomena, or who are hoping against hope that there aren't miracles. Their beliefs, values, experiences and willingness support a different world-view than mine. To make this matter even more complicated, I may well be the only person to whom God will manifest in just this way.

I want to leap to still another level of generality. Having just told you about four conditions--true need, confident willingness, state of faith, and non-attachment—I must quickly add that your universe may require a different set of conditions. I am only one reality bio-resonator. There an infinite number of reality machines.

There are those people, for example, who believe that they must suffer and die for humanity. There are those who believe that the U.S.A. is the best country and other big powers will destroy us if we don't maintain a strong defense. There are those who believe that Christ will come again to punish the wicked. There are those who believe that they are possessed of evil demons.

God will accommodate your beliefs; he will throw them right back at you. I read a most wonderful affirmation the other day in the book Waiting for Mr. Right. It said, in effect, that we are created by a God who has everything. We are created by a God who has no other expectation than that we realize our full potential as we see it! In creating us as we are, God is stating that the universe wouldn't be complete without us.

Think about this, folks! What an amazing thought. What if ... what if God does give you what you want? Not what is running through your mind at this particular second, but what your general pattern of beliefs, values, willing, and actions is leading up to. If you want to be an atheist, God says, “Fine! I love atheist, too. Here you are, atheist, more evidence that there is no God. I hope this makes you happy.” If you want to be a murderer, then God says, “Ok, kiddo, here is the victim you have been waiting for.” If you want to be murdered (read, if you constantly fear being murdered) ,God says, “Have I got a murderer for you!”

Remember my analogy between getting to know God and getting to know a person in Ch.2? My talk about co-creating a mutual social reality with a friend? We talk to our friends and they to us. We put out an expectation and wait for them to send us a sign of acceptance or rejection, and then we act accordingly.

God is that potentially friendly universe with which we are interacting. The idea that I am emphasizing here is that the universe is a unity. Armed with our beliefs, our values, and our conscious and unconscious tendencies, we get to know this Universe as we grow. We put out an expectation and wait for a return sign. Many people who expect to get rich do so. Many people who expect to get educated do so. Many who expect to suffer do so. Many who expect to see Jesus Christ do so. Many who expect to see nothing of the kind do so. Many who expect to have their expectations unmet, have their expectations unmet.

You know, it's a lot like a high school dance. Some of the people are there to have fun. They are dancing. Some are there having fun, but aren't dancing. Some are not having fun. Some are not there.

It takes time to get to know God, and even more time to dance with Her. Ask yourself this question: "How would you dance with a woman the size of the universe?" That is a very heavy question. Some would say, "I won't dance, don't ask me!" Others will say, "There is no woman the size of the universe!" Others will say, "I don't know her." Others, "She's too big and important to dance with me." Still others, "Sure, I'll give it a try!" And a few will say, "I've been dancing with the universe all my life!"

The truth of the matter is that God is a woman the size of the universe (and a man, too). God wants to dance with you. She's trying to get your attention right now. She's winking at you, if you look closely. She doesn't think you're too short at all. She likes short men (and women). She'll be careful not to step on your feet, but you have to remember, she takes big steps. She knows how to lead and how to follow. She's a very good dancer. Now listen to me; she likes you a lot. She'll dance with anyone if they just ask.

And this is the neatest part of all. She knows all your dancing steps. She'll help you create some new ones, and in fact, she's got some new ones in mind that only you and she could perfect. “How do you dance with a woman the size of the universe?” Stick out your arms and hug Everything. Feel Everything hug you back in return. Then start to move, gracefully, if possible …

Ch. 5: Eight for a Date

We were in study hall in the eighth grade. It was noon time after lunch on a cool fall day in one of those enormous 200 seater rooms. This is where the kids who had nothing better to do after lunch hung out. There were maybe fifteen kids in that big room. Jim and Dee were there. Mariam and Myra were there. Willard was there. Frances may have been there. Sylvia and Beebe were probably not there.

Jim and Dee were best friends at the time. As my song "He Just Wanted To Be Himself' says, “And he had a best buddy who was timid and shy and just a little bit weird like Jim. And they probably were similar to Oliver and Hardy; Jim was fat, and Dee was slim.”

Dee was a very good and bright young man with a very poor self-concept. He was a talented artist and musician. He had a great interest in drums, and practiced for hours a day with two pencils on every conceivable object. He was a wise-cracker. Anything of importance that was said was fair game for Dee's remarks. His favorite expressions were "Golly!," "Gosh!," and "Heavens to Mergatroid!" The latter expression came from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle TV cartoon show.

Jim, you've already heard about. Jim and Dee spent a lot of time talking about important things like cars, flying saucers, and lighting farts. They were also good students.

Mariam is our heroine. At this time she was the proverbial ugly duckling with a mouth full of braces, thick glasses and mousey brown hair. She was also saddled with a very mild form of muscular dystrophy and slightly crossed eyes. (Naturally, Mariam is to become a beautiful swan, or I would never have described her like this.) She played the clarinet in the band. Her studies were so-so.

Myra was the fIrst girl that Jim ever kissed (first grade), and would become his high school sweetheart. Born of Russian immigrant parents, she lived in the country and rode the bus. She had an unusual hobby: she filled spiral-ringed notebooks with the titles of songs she heard on the radio. Myra was a hard worker, a bit of a plodder, very plain of speech and looks. She was also given to unexpected belches which she always quickly followed with an "Excuse me."

Willard was a tall, gangly, skinny, square-jawed young man. He compensated for a bit of effeminacy by confident speech and social bearing. He was given to interests like speech, business and debating. He and Dee would soon also take a great interest in girls. There was a formality about Will that was always in the background, even when he was having fun. I admired Willard's social confIdence, and I depended on him in difficult social situations.

And so these fIve young people started up a conversation that day in study hall. The revenge of the nerds was about to begin. I don't remember much of what was said, but I do remember that Mariam and Willard were pretty much the initiators. We sort of stood around in a circle with desks between us. There was a lot of nervous laughter. It wasn’t too long before we were spending a lot of time together. We did a lot of the things that teenagers do. We piled into Mariam's old, beat up Chevy and sat for hours in drive-ins consuming fries, burgers, dogs, and cokes. We talked about each other's lives, who was dating who, Elvis, Roy Orbison, Connie Francis, our teachers, friends and enemies. We had picnics at state parks. When the boys were together we talked about necking. When the girls were together they talked about necking.

Dee had all the “routes” of the city memorized. There was nothing he loved more than to get into a chase with some other punk teenagers. Then he would fly up Quarry street, down some impossibly narrow alley, and come out on Glendale near the shopping center. He always lost them. We did a lot of this crazy driving. We craved excitement.

We started having parties. Things pretty much centered around my home and Mariam's home. My mom and Mariam's mom were tuned into these kids. They were the legendary earth mothers with the apple pie. Even today, some of the old gang call mom to see how she is.

We never got together just to drink and neck. It wasn't too long before Dee and Sylvia were an inseparable item, so after a brief fling at non-stop-24-hour heavy-petting, they got most of their necking in before and after the parties. Willard dated Mariam off and on, but there was no real attraction there, and he ended up with Joyce, a senior, when he was in the eleventh grade. I, of course, was anxious to avoid any heavy petting at all costs. After much pressure, I ended up dating Myra in my junior and senior years. I was very fond of her.

Probably because we were special, we were creative, different, intelligent, these parties of ours evolved in complex ways. We started having theme parties. We had a treasure hunt at Willard's house and a Halloween party at Mariam's. We had a Hawaiian Luau at Sylvia's. Several birthday parties ensued.

At the same time, we were all disposed to pranks. Mariam and I were the worst, followed quickly thereafter by Dee and Willard. Let me tell you about one of the pranks, so you can get the idea.

One summer day we were out on a country lane. Frances' car was parked at the top of a small rise. We were just hanging out, wading in a country stream. Willard suggested to me that we let the brakes off the car and make it look like the car was coasting down into the creek. I stealthily got in the car. Peeking through the crack between the body and the slightly open door, I began to steer the car down the hill. Willard screamed, ”Frances, Frances, my God! Your car is loose!”￼ Poor Frances. It scared the daylights out of her. “You guys,” she said, in an expression of half-humor, half-disgust. Of course, every one else thought this was all very funny.

We talked about pranks a lot. We had all heard rumors of lots of crazy tricks. Supposedly, on Halloween, Bob Seyler and Bob Cunningham had stolen Miss Clark's electric box from her porch. George Lindamood had ordered a case of beer delivered to her house at the same time a hearse and an ambulance arrived. We heard about sacks fIlled with cow manure being set on fire on a porch, so that when the homeowners tried to stomp out the fire, they got messy, stinky shoes. But we were much too creative, we thought, to restrict our activities to such pedestrian and unimaginative tricks.

We decided to get Mariam. (By this time, it was a tribute to have a trick played on you.) This was to be the big production. We would stage a murder, and Mariam would be the only witness. Willard and I were the main initiators of this one.

We needed some kind of cover, so we decided we would have a party. Willard would pick up Mariam early and take her out on a country road, ostensibly to neck a little bit. Then, while they were parked, the rest of the gang would stage a “murder” in another car parked nearby. Mariam would see the “murder,” and we would carry the joke as far as we could.

The day of the party, we had a ball. Dee and I mixed up some “blood” from ketchup and other available substances. We would take along a cap gun and flash camera to simulate a shooting. The murder site had to be carefully researched. We decided on Stanleyville road because it was relatively untravelled.

Willard was dating Joyce at the time, so we used her car. Eight of us piled into it. We had all our props and rehearsed our roles. There would be an argument and shouting. Joyce would flash the camera and at the same time Myra would shoot the cap gun. Then Dee and Willard's brother, Rich, would drag me in front of the car lights. Frances would pour the blood on the road and leave a cap behind.

We made out for Stanleyville road. It was a perfect night for a murder: chilly, thunder, light rain, and a little fog. Unfortunately, the fog was much thicker at the proposed murder site. We were worried that Mariam wouldn't see what was going on. As we drove to the appointed place, we did pass Willard and Mariam parked in Mariam's car.

The murder took place on schedule. The fight occurred, the gun and flash went off, I was “beaten” in front of the car headlights, and the blood was deposited on the road. There were a few hitches to the plan, however. For one thing, we hadn't planned on the rain. At 200 pounds, I was quite a body. Dee and Rich dragged my butt through the mud, giggling and laughing all the way. The rain was to wash away the blood.

We were supposed to chase Willard and Mariam to make it more exciting. As it turned out, we couldn't keep up with them. Later that evening we found out why. Willard was driving and was trying to keep the car at a chase-able speed, but Mariam had other ideas. In her panic, she had stomped her foot down on top of his. It is a tribute to Willard's driving that they didn't go off some of the banks on Stanleyville Road. Fortunately for the sake of the trick, Willard was able to steer down a longer course back to the party. We had to get back to my house and start partying, and I had to change my filthy clothes.

Mariam arrive in an extreme state of excitement. As it turned out, she only saw the flash of light, nothing else, but Willard had convinced her of the rest. She immediately wanted to call the county sheriff. We, of course, had decided to pretend that we were unconvinced, and to make her take us back out to the site. When we got there, the blood and the tire tracks were washed away, but the cap was found.

I still have a strong mental image of us all hovering around the phone with Mariam saying, “We've got to call the Sheriff!” We were egging her on, but my mother was in on it, and she had the good sense to tell Mariam that it was all a joke.

After that party, the pressure was on to construct bigger and better jokes. We told everybody we knew about the murder at least once. We felt we had established our own creative, unique identity. We were not like the rest of those “normal”kids.

There were reasons for this elitism. Most of us had been rejected because of our differences from the normal, and now we were rubbing this rejection back into everyone's face. Mariam tells the story of how she was standing in a group of girls in the restroom. Anne E. said to her friends, “We don't talk to her.” This deeply wounded Mariam.

Twenty years later, in one of those twists of fate, Mariam got her satisfaction. She had been given the keys to her home town, Marietta, by the mayor for her outstanding work on the Delta Queen. Hundreds of people turned out for this occasion. As Mariam was walking off the gang plank in an exquisite antebellum southern gown, hair elegantly styled, who should emerge from the “seething masses” but Anne E. with a brood of screaming kids.

“I'm not sure you remember me,” Anne began. “I was Anne E., and we went to high school together. Could I have your autograph?”

“I definitely remember you, and no, you can't have my autograph.”

Our teenage imaginations reached their full maturity in our final escapade: a visit from a flying saucer! Before I tell you about this amazing prank, I must digress. Having just read Whitney Schreiber's Communion, I must say that I have never read a more thought-provoking book on the so-called UFO phenomenon. Whitney took my thinking way beyond where it was. Where was my thinking?

Well, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that flying saucers are real, because I have experienced them on three separate occasions in my life. My first encounter with a UFO occurred when I was eleven. Chuckie Fisk and I were boy scouts, and we were playing down at the city park on the banks of the Muskingum River. It was a lovely park with lots of trees and grass, and a famous statue done by Gutzem Borglem. I looked up in the sky and there they were. “Chuckie! Look at that,” I cried out. Three tear drop shaped orange aircraft in a vee formation were overhead in the blue summer sky. They looked as far away as a modern jet, possibly even farther, but they were moving at quite an amazing rate of speed. If they were indeed at a height of several miles, as they appeared, they would have been going 3,000 to 5,000 miles per hour.

These things alone would have been astounding, but there was yet another feature of their motion which defied any laws of air travel known to humanity at the time. These craft would move at this rapid rate and then instantaneously stand still. After a few moments they would continue to move. Not only this, but at several points, they literally moved from one point in the sky to another one without any apparent motion in between.

We really couldn't believe our eyes. We must have watched this phenomenon for 15 to 20 minutes. When it was over, we actually discussed whether we should tell our parents or not (Chuckie actually was living with foster parents), because we weren't sure that they would believe us. I did decide to tell my mother, and while she was a bit skeptical, she didn't totally discount it.

The next day it was reported in the Marietta Times that hundreds of calls were received confirming UFO sightings in the area. You may recall that the '50s were a decade of UFO reports, and that Ohio was one of the states where many sightings occurred, especially around Wright-Patterson AFB.

Several years later, when I was in my middle teens, I again saw a similar phenomenon. This time I was with my entire family—mom and dad, Tom and Vicki. We were driving to the open air theater at sunset when we chanced to spot an orange disk flying at about the same height as the ones I had sighted in earlier years. This one, however, did not make the jerky movements of the other three. Still, it was clear that this was no ordinary aircraft. For one thing, it circled at this high distance, unlike any commercial flight. We finally watched it disappear over the horizon. Again, the next day, the local paper carried a story about wide-spread reports of UFO.

The last time I saw a UFO, it was of quite a different nature. This was in the late '60s. I was driving home to Marietta to visit my family from Indiana University in Bloomington, where I was in the middle of a Ph.D. program in philosophy of education. As I was turning onto US 70 from Indiana Route 46, I spotted off to my right a very strange apparition. This appeared to be a metallic grey object which looked like a thin pencil of metal about two feet long. Out of one end of this “pencil” stuck three other thin metal cylinders resembling the landing vanes of a tiny space craft. This object appeared to be floating motionless on its side about 75 feet up in the air.

I could hardly believe my eyes. I simply had to stop the car and get out. (As you will see later, I was undaunted by fear of any potential space craft, and you may recall how I loved science fiction.) I stood there with this eerie feeling in my heart watching this absolutely motionless object. I walked around it, over the grassy knoll at the side of the freeway. Still no motion. Finally, I got the distinct feeling that I simply had to leave. It was not out of fear, just a feeling that it was time for me to leave. As I drove away, I could still see this object receding in my rear-view mirror.

What it was I still cannot say. It could have been a probe from a UFO. It could have been a UFO from a planet where the people were ant-sized. But whatever it was, it defIed my knowledge of the so-called laws of gravity.

I was about seventeen when the UFO prank was hatched. Bear in mind that the middle fifties were saturated with UFO lore. There had recently been a story in the paper about a couple parked on a deserted road whose car had stopped dead with the approach of a saucer-like craft. Mariam, Myra and Sylvia, Willard, Dee, and I had been out driving on the back country roads of Washington County. We had seen a green flashing light coming over a hill.

Immediately the car was full of talk about flying saucers. I jumped out of the car (it was a red Chevy convertible with the top down), and announced to the group that I was going over the hill to investigate. They tried to persuade me to stop, but I was fearless in my determination. Actually, I think I secretly wanted to see a flying saucer close up.

When I got to the top of the hill, it turned out to be some farmer welding a broken tractor part. But I was not about to miss an opportunity like this. I went running down the hill, jumped into the car, and said “Let's get out of here!” I told them that I couldn't see clearly, but that there was some kind of strange three-legged craft with flashing green lights coming from around its edge. I said that I had seen some kind of movement on the craft.

During that week I talked to Mariam, and then to Willard about pulling off a UFO gag with some of our gang of kids. We would get Dee, Frances and Myra to go for a ride on a Washington County back road with us. We would arrange to have evidence of the presence of a flying saucer, and we would convince them that we had actually had a visitation.

The plans were elaborate. I rigged up Mariam's old red chevy so that I could flip some wires just under the dashboard and disconnect the electrical system. We went to Kresge's and bought some fluorescent paint. The day before the trick, we researched the area of the drive, and found a likely stretch of road. High up in a tree we put a large inflated fluorescent balloon.

Probably the greatest stroke of genius was the envelope flaps. I got the idea to cut off the sticky portion of several envelope flaps. These vee-shaped wedges were covered with fluorescent paint on the non-sticky side. We planned to surreptitiously stick them to our foreheads.

The night of the prank the six of us went out for burgers and cokes. We herded the unsuspecting Frances, Myra and Dee into the back seat of Mariam's car. After dinner we began our ride. Out in the country, several miles before we came to the appointed spot, I said “Do you all smell that strange smell?”

“I sure do,” Willard chimed in. “Me, too,” said Mariam.

Nobody in the back seat could smell it.
“It smells like violets to me,” I continued. Now just that week we had been talking about the couple whose car had been stopped on the back road by a flying saucer. Those people had smelled violets.

Frances said, “Jim, cut it out. You're just trying to trick us.”

“No, Frances. Honest to God. I smell it.”

Willard had been secretly charging the vee-shaped forehead patches with a flashlight that was kept in the glove compartment. Now he quietly screwed the cap off the flashlight and turned the batteries around, so that it wouldn't light.

“I smell it too,” Myra said. “I'm scared, you guys!”

Now it was Mariam's turn. “Look up in that tree! There's some kind of glowing light.”

The car slowed down.
“Wait a minute, why are you stopping?” Dee asked.
“Something's wrong with the car engine," I said.
I disconnected the wires under the dash board. Now Willard, Mariam and I piled out of the car. Willard walked around to the other side, and as we had previously planned, we fell into a heap on the ground. Quickly we licked the stickers and applied them to our foreheads. Mariam was laughing so much she slightly peed herself, but of course this was quiet laughter.

Dee was nobody's dummy, and he had suspected a trick. However, our acting and planning was done so well, that even he was frightened and half convinced. As we were falling to the ground I heard him say, “I saw Willard fiddling with the flashlight.” Apparently Dee tried to get it to work, and immediately took the cap off, discovering the reversed batteries. “These batteries are turned around,”he announced.

But we had already got up from the ground, joined hands, and started walking down the road away from the car. We had planned to moan and groan as if under some kind of mental coercion. We walked about fifty yards down the road, with Dee running along beside of us. “What's wrong, Jim,” Dee said with a some what panic stricken tone of voice. We continued to moan. Then Dee cried, “My God, there's a light shining out of your forehead!” The illusion had worked!

Then Dee amazed me by reaching up and trying to put his hand in the apparent opening on my forehead. He felt the paper and pulled it off. “This is paper,” he said in a somewhat confused, disgusted tone. He was half sure that this was a trick, but the illusion was so powerful that he was still terrified.

At this point we thought that the trick was probably over, so we turned around and walked silently back to the car. Dee got in first, and then the three of us. Myra was crying hard. Frances said, “If this is a trick, you guys, I'll never speak to you again.”

Suddenly the excitement we had felt was replaced by confusion, regret and guilt, at least, that's what I felt. We drove all the way back to Frances's house more or less in silence. When we got there, I told them the truth. Myra was relieved but irritated, Frances was disgusted, and Dee was in shock.

Dee actually had a memory loss. It was apparent that he hadn't been able to cope with this situation. To this day, I still admire him for the bravery that he showed in pulling the paper from my forehead. Yet back at Frances's place, he still held that paper tightly clenched in his right hand. I literally pried the hand apart and showed the paper to him to prove that what I was saying was true.

Frances never forgave us. I saw her very little after that. We all learned an important lesson from this. We had gone too far. We had not considered the serious effect of so realistic a prank on our friends. We resolved never again to go to such extremes. And while we still delight in telling this story, it was the last major trick anyone played.

As I now reminisce, I realize how much we loved each other, and how much we formed each other's character. Of that group, all three of the guys went on to get doctors degrees. Mine was in philosophy of education, Dee's was in medicine, and Willard's was in business.

Frances became a nurse, and I don't know where she is now. Myra became an elementary school teacher and married politically conservative guy in California. Mariam developed an amazing career. She was hostess and cruise director on ships that travelled allover the world and also up and down the Mississippi River. She also had an acting career for a short time, and was assistant to the producer of the Mike Douglas Show. Currently she has her own travel business.

Dee and I went to Marietta College, Mariam and Myra went to Ohio University. We stayed friends all through college. Willard moved to Cleveland, and by coincidence, after I graduated from college, I got a job near Cleveland working for Republic Steel Research Center. Myra also had got a job teaching in Cleveland. Dee got a job at a Western Reserve medical lab. Finally, Mariam joined us through a connection I had at Republic Steel.

Mariam moved in with Myra, and Dee and I moved into a different apartment. There we were again, playing bridge every night, taking turns cooking. We had two more fun-filled and caring years together. But since we obviously did not meet each others sexual and familial needs, we gradually made other plans and moved into new phases of our lives.

Over all of our lives, Mariam, Myra, Dee, Willard, and I have stayed close and shared through the good times and the bad. I will always love them.

There are two observations that I would like to make on this chapter of my past and present. The fIrst is that these adolescent fantasies were obvious training grounds for my metaphysical development. Metaphysics requires a suspension of ordinary belief and an ability to deal with remote but possible probabilities. The fact that I was able to conceive of a fantasy and bring it into being set a tone to my life. However, many of these fantasies went beyond the socially safe or acceptable.

The second observation has to do with an objection which might be raised to the metaphysical claims in my book. A sceptic might say, "This chapter shows how unworthy are your claims of co-creating reality with God. It is clear that even when you were young you were given to thinking that regarded excitement and out-of-the-ordinary events as of higher priority than the correspondence of such alleged events with what actually happened. As you have grown older, you have simply convinced yourself of a structure of reality that is not valid."

Colin Wilson, in The Occult has made an observation that has also been made by several other close observers of those alleged to manifest “supernatural” powers. His point is that we seldom find an untainted situation where psychic phenomena are concerned. The lives of many gifted psychics are surrounded by an atmosphere of intrigue and deception. He has an explanation for this. The fact is that many of these people came to make their living from their gifts. People who have paid money for a demonstration are not going to be satisfIed with the limp explanation, "Well, that's just the way these things are. They are not entirely predictable. I guess my intuition is just not functioning today." And so the most gifted of these people have developed techniques of psychic sleight-of-hand to fall back on when intuition fails them.

Wilson and others have gone on to point out that uncovering a deception does not prove that these individuals do not have paranormal abilities, only that these abilities did not function in this particular situation.

I have still another observation. I realize upon reflection that the members of my peer group were seeking thrills. In today's parlance, we might be called T-type personalities. However, of the group, I am the only one who really looked into the metaphysical underpinnings of things. I am the only one who self-consciously sought out a methodological foundation for changing reality. And through my study of metaphysics and my own exploration, I have come into possession of such a methodology.

It is obvious to me that the others in the group, especially the more creative ones have subconsciously profited from synchronistic connections. Just recently Mariam wanted to buy a house, but thought she couldn't afford it. She devised a scheme to write a book about her world travels and sell it. She advertised in the National Enquirer although she doesn't read that paper, because of its national circulation. Result: sixty books sold and several thousand dollars deeper in debt.

One day when talking to her boss about an entirely different matter he asked her how she was. She told him this story and of her frustration. Two hours later he offered her a $10,000 bonus and a $10,000 a year raise in appreciation for her hard work and loyalty over the past few years. She was able to buy the house in Thousand Oaks.

When I talked to her on the phone she said to me, "Well, the book succeeded in getting me the house, only not just as I planned it. " Yet Mariam is quite skeptical of my metaphysical musings. She thinks Shirley MacLaine has gone too far in her last two books, even though she has tremendous admiration for Shirley.

I see this whole matter differently. Mariam has always had the power to take advantage of synchronicity in creating her own reality. She believes in herself and her ability to manifest whatever she desires. Whether she knows it or not, in practice she is an accomplished metaphysician!

Myra and I have always remained close, but recently I received a disappointment. I had sent her a tape of my “new age songs,” and one of them was about growing up different. The strong overtone was that I was dealing with my homosexuality while growing up. A few weeks after that I received from Myra a packet of anti-homosexual brochures from the fundamentalist church group she attends.

This hurt my feelings, but after a few days, I sent her a three page typewritten paper quoting Jesus' sayings from the bible. Of course, Jesus had nothing to say about homosexuality. I concluded the letter with "The word of our Lord, Jesus Christ." When I got Myra's Christmas letter this year, I received the single line, “If I had wanted to provoke such hostility, I would have sent you scripture.” I haven’t responded yet, but when I do, I intend for my response to be loving. I am confIdent that we will weather this storm.

Willard has become an extremely successful professor of business and a speaker of national acclaim, and family man with three grown children. Over the years he has flown into St. Louis several times to visit or just to have dinner at the airport. We have kept up on our lives, and there is still an intimacy that amazes me, since we see each other so infrequently.

Dee also has a successful marriage, a family of four children, and a career as a pathologist. I received the most moving letter from Dee a few weeks ago. I will conclude this chapter with a quote from that letter: “We go back a long time, and I remember great times together. You are truly a special friend to me. Was I actually capable of saying all that stuff? ... I believe our small high school group has much to be thankful for and proud of--we have all withstood the odds and went on to try to follow our own convictions, all with good and honorable goals and dreams. Knowing you and our friends and being accepted by them was so significant .... As I see age creeping up and view life in a new perspective, I see how important these friendships were (and still are) and how our close association as youths influenced our future.”

Thanks Dee. I needed that.

Ch. 6: Back to the Present

I. Don Busch, Jr.

Memorial Day Weekend, 1987, Stephen and I went to visit Don Busch, Jr. and his lover, Alston Boolan, in Chicago. Don has been living with an AIDS diagnosis since February of this year. We go back a long way.

I had been out about two years. I had gone to Martin's Saturday night. It truly was exciting to go into a gay disco in 1975. The music literally drew you into it. People danced for hours. Flashing lights swept the dance floor. The psychedelic feeling was overpowering. I was standing in the VIP room, which could hold hundreds of people. In addition to the main dance floor, there was an elevated floor for drag shows or the best dancers. Don came up to me from behind and put his arms around me. I turned and saw this tall, thin, young, bearded person smiling broadly at me.￼Group 82.9.png Caption: Don Busch, Jr, 1982, Chicago Don Busch, Jr, 1982, Chicago

We had a good conversation, but I had decided that I was not going out to pick someone up that night. After about a half hour, I excused myself and left. I went to the old Red Bull and sat watching the drag show there. Again, who should sit down beside me but Don. We ended up going home together. (By the way, one of the rules of the universe about communicating with God is: if He says the same thing twice, you should listen.)

We got to my home and began the obligatory "gay debriefing”—you tell each other everything about yourself in a few minutes. We had both tagged each other at about 27 years old. As a matter of fact, he was 18 and I was 36.

"I'm old enough to be your father," I said. "I know," he grinned in reply.

We dated off and on for about two weeks. Our connection grew rapidly into a friendship. I began to appreciate Don's sensitivity. He loved to play Gershwin. We both were into the pop music of the time. But more than that, there was a bond there that I can't explain. Just an ineffable connection; an enjoyment of each other’s ways.

At the end of this short dating time, I sent Don off to find a younger lover. I told him that he was too young, and I was too set in my ways. But we always stayed in touch. The first thing he did was to go out and find a lover who was almost as old as I was. Rod is still his good friend.

Don was into Levis and he tended to hang out in leather bars. He moved to Chicago and lived in the inner city for a while. I visited him a few times there, and met a few of his lovers and friends over the years.

It's a funny thing about me. I'm so adaptable. I have slept in cockroach-laden hovels and elegant suburban mansions and been comfortable in each. I remember one visit with Don in the early '80s. He was living in a run-down tenement overlooking the slum streets on the south side. Don always had the best stereo equipment everywhere he lived, and this was no exception. The guy he was going with, also named Don, was not Don's match in intelligence. This was a sexual mating. But I enjoyed our visit, our tour of the Chicago leather scene.

II. Byron Davidson

It is now Sunday, July 12. AIDS, and more than that, the damage that gets done to gay men in our society, is strongly with me in the present. I have now lost one former intimate friend and one more casual friend to AIDS. Currently, Byron and Don have AIDS and will most probably die from it. At least one other friend, Tom, is HIV positive.

Last night, I stopped off at National to pick up some meat for the Men's Potluck which is held on Steve Wyman's farm each month. As I was returning to my car with the sack of groceries, I spotted Byron leaning heavily on a grocery cart with two large brown bags in it as he pushed his way to his car.￼Group Scanned Image 103190007_2.jpg Caption: Jym and Byron in 1975 Jym and Byron in 1975

You have to understand that I wouldn't be writing this book right now if it weren't for Byron. I intend to tell Byron's story in the course of this autobiography. Unfortunately, there is a strong chance that Byron will never read what I have to say on his behalf. Byron is murdering himself. But for now, I must postpone this background and tell you what happened in the parking lot.

Byron has gone down hill rapidly in the past few months. First, he got mugged behind his apartment. Now he has had to retire and move to a smaller apartment. Despite my very busy summer, Stephen and I have tried to be of some support for him by going shopping for him or taking him out to dinner.

In fact, I was supposed to put curtains up in his new apartment last weekend, but he called on Saturday night and informed me that he had had a bad fall in the bathroom and needed to have some time to himself. I should have known that he was drinking again, but these alcoholics can be very stealthy in pursuing their habit. I called several times during the week, but never reached Byron.

I walked swiftly across several rows of parked cars towards Byron. As I got close to him, I could see that he was in terrible shape. I stood at the side of his cart and looked right at him. He stared blankly at the figure before him. His face was puffy, red, and covered with scaly white flakes of skin. Finally, he recognized me.

“How are you, Byron?”

“Not good.”

“I called a couple of times this week, but I wasn't able to reach you.” He pulled his hair back from his forehead and revealed an ugly black scab. I fell in the bathroom last week. I have a concussion. "

As he said this, I happened to glance down in the sacks in his basket. I saw that he had twenty four cans of beer. Fear and concern swept through my heart. We continued to stare at each other.

"You're checking out, aren't you?" I finally managed.
"Yes, I'm calling it quits. This is too much to expect of anyone. "

My mind raced back to the many times when I had stood facing Byron under similar circumstances. This year on February 14 at 1:30 AM, Stephen and I were awakened by a phone call. Byron was at the police station. I dutifully went and got him. He had been drinking, and probably doing something he shouldn't have been. There he was in his running suit with no identification. I thought of all the critical illnesses I had helped him with, all the times he had cried on my shoulder about a lost lover, his rotten job, and his demanding friends.

"I don't know what to say," I finally managed weakly. "I know," he managed, just as weakly.

After a few more seconds of futilely staring at him, I turned on my heel and walked away. I never looked back. I went into the grocery store, but my mind was hardly on the shopping. I was almost trembling with emotion. Rage, sadness, compassion, disgust, commitment, all these feelings welled up inside me. My mind raced, because frankly, I really didn't know what to do.

When you have deal for years with an alcoholic, you do reach a breaking point. And I had reached mine. I managed to finish the shopping and went home. I told Stephen briefly that I had discovered that Byron was drinking again, and when I composed myself, I would tell him the story. Finally, I called the AIDS hotline and talked to Mike. I told them the details.

“I’m really angry with Byron right now,” I said, “and I don't think I would be the most helpful person to be around him. He has a buddy by the name of Ron, but apparently, Ron hasn't been around as much lately. Besides, he has a bloody wound on his forehead, and I don't really feel comfortable trying to deal with him in this condition.”

“Well, as long as you don't have any open cuts on your hand, you can go ahead and help him, but I understand how you feel. That's what we're here for. I'll see if I can get someone to do something about this.”

Stephen and I were supposed to be at Sheila's for dinner and an entertaining evening. I called and explained to her that I would be late.

“I’m really concerned that you don't talk about Byron this evening. I think you're a dear, loyal, caring friend, but I'm really angry, angry with Byron right now!”

“I’m angry with him, too, Sheila, and I won't talk about him, but I thought you needed to know the situation.”

“Sure thing, babe, see you in a while.”

Just as we were leaving for Sheila's; who should beep his horn but Tom Bolman (you remember the friend from Chapter 1 whose skepticism inspired me to start this book.) He and his lover, Robert were just on their way home in their bright red Mazda sports coup. I motioned Tom over to the curb and unloaded this story about Byron to them. Tom has been very active in Effort for Aids work, and I thought he might be of some assistance in getting Byron help. I could see that Tom was crestfallen about this news. “I'll see you guys tomorrow at the Men's Potluck.”

On the way out to Sheila's I talked a bit more with Stephen about the problem. “This was no accident that I met Byron in the parking lot. He was trying to avoid me, but the universe arranged for me to have this information. You can't help an alcoholic until they want to be helped. This is beyond my competence to deal with. Byron needs professional medical and psychiatric help. I'll deal with him when and if he becomes sober again.”

“Do you want to mastermind about it?” Stephen ventured.

I did mastermind with Stephen. "I affirm that I attract to myself peace of mind and a loving attitude toward Byron, and that I am able to relate to him in a way that is for the good of all concerned.”

Stephen repeated my affirmation.

“I bless this, I release it, I accept it into my life, and I give thanks to the Mastermind, to my masterminding partner, and to my inner reality which makes forgiveness possible.”

III. Don Busch, Jr.

Now I need to finish the story about Don Busch. About 1983, Don started having problems. He had swollen lymph nodes, and a number of stubborn infections. Last year they classified his illness as ARC (aids-related complex). He had the familiar night sweats and fevers. They suspected for a long time that he had systemic tuberculosis. In February of this year, he had to have his spleen removed. This improved him for a while, but then he developed systemic candidiasis, which is now grounds for reclassification as an AIDS patient.

When Stephen and I arrived at Don's house on Memorial Day Weekend, we found a situation which was in my opinion not good at all. First let me say that Alston is very good to Don. Alston not only gives him the care he needs, but tolerates Don's short temper, temper which comes from the discomfort of the sickness itself.

On the other hand, Don and Alston are both chain smokers, and in addition to this, Don drinks coffee and coke by the gallons. Poor dear Stephen. He never said a word of complaint the whole time we were there, but I could tell that the smoke was having a terrible effect on him. Stephen himself has candidiasis, and so we both know quite a bit about its treatment.

“You know, Don, Stephen has candidiasis too. Two of the things he absolutely must avoid at all costs is sugar and wine. The coke you are drinking may be aggravating your esophageal candidiasis. We'd be glad to discuss this with you, if you'd want.” I said these things as gently as I could.

“No. I talked to my doctor about this. What Stephen has and what I have are totally different things. It wouldn't help me to stop drinking Coke.”

After we got back from Denny's, Don had been strong enough to play a couple of Gershwin pieces on his grand piano. I also played the piano for Don. Alston wasn't there, since he had a dental appointment. One of the reasons that Don had wanted me to come to Chicago, is that he wants to give me his grand piano when he dies. On the other hand, Alston doesn't want me to have the piano. I think he feels he needs the money from it. This was a very delicate situation, and I handled it as best I could.

Stephen and I went out to the aquarium, and when we got back we found that Don had been in bed sick since we left. Alston fixed us a very nice dinner and we retired.

The next morning, Stephen and I went out for breakfast. Alston made a point of saying that he doesn't eat breakfast or lunch. When we returned, it was obvious that it was time for us to go. Still, Don asked me to "play for Alston" which I'm sure Alston didn't appreciate. I did, and then, amidst grumblings from Alston about having things to do, we left.

[Ed. note: In the Epilog of my musical review, Songs from a Gay Man’s Life (http://jandris.ipage.com/jimpers/review.html), I present more of the stories of both of these men, and one song for each of them.]

Ch. 7: Precognition

One of the aspects of my reality is a pre-knowledge of events. I'm not particularly gifted in this area. I have noticed that my precognitive ability functions to protect me from difficult situations. Often, I will get a warning thought that something is going to happen before it actually does. Let me give you some examples.

In 1980, shortly after I moved to St. Louis, I acquired a beautiful grey alleycat named Spencer from Harvey Taylor, a professor at SlUE. His wife Velma had told him that they had too many pets, and one of the cats had to go. I had been mildly allergic to cats in my childhood, but I thought I would take a chance with this one. After all, I might have outgrown my allergy.

The first thing I did was to rename this cat. There was one good reason, and one not so good reason for doing so. Spencer was not a boy cat. They had named him before his sex was apparent. I was into being campy at the time, and thought it would be “a hoot,” as they say, to be calling “Here, Mary!” when I wanted my cat to come.

Mary seemed to take to her new name and her new home quite well. She was a quiet, affectionate, well-behaved cat, and she was good company for me. In fact, other than goldfIsh, she was the first pet I had ever owned on my own. Mary had a habit of greeting me at the door when I came home from work every day. I would talk to her, and pet her, and make sure that she was fed. She would purr and curl up next to me on the couch.

As it turned out, I was to develop a rather diffIcult allergy to Mary. After about ten days, my eyes started itching and swelling from the animal dander which she was leaving around. Then I began to sneeze in the morning. Eventually, I had to give the cat back to Harvey, even though I hated to do so.

One day after Mary had been with me for about a week, I arrived at home after work. As I was putting my key into the mail box in the hallway, I suddenly received a clear flash, a mental image. Here is what I saw. The image was of the kitchen in my apartment. The view was· the kitchen door from the hallway. I could see the refrigerator and the window to the back yard. On the floor in front of the refrigerator was the green spider plant that I had setting on the window sill. The dirt was spilled out on the floor.

Well, the image came and went so fast that I didn't really give it any thought. I got my mail, went into the house, greeted Mary and sat down to read the mail. Mary was acting distant, staying off to herself. After a while, I got up to get myself a drink of water from the kitchen. I was confronted there with the exact image that I had experienced in the front hallway. Mary had knocked the flower pot off on to the floor.

I whirled around and there was Mary standing in the doorway, looking at me. I said to her, “You sent me that image, didn't you, so that I wouldn't smack you when I saw this mess?!” I walked over to her with that half-affectionate, half-angry attitude one will adopt under such circumstances. As soon as I reached down gently, she began to purr, and things were back to normal.

I was reminded of this story because of what happened today, Sunday, May 31, 1987. Stephen and I were slated to do our first stint as ushers for Trinity Episcopal Church. Ushering at Trinity is no small accomplishment. You are generally responsible for smooth behind-the-scenes movement on the congregation's side of the altar. Fortunately, Fred Hale, the head usher, was there and led us skillfully through our responsibilities.

However, I did not know that we would have a guide until last night, when I called Tom Bolman to ask him about the service. All I had was a one-page, single-spaced, typewritten page from Father Chapman, some of the liturgical words of which I did not recognize. I had gotten the page out and tried to go over it with Stephen, but he was tired, and didn't seem concerned.

While I was trying to fIgure out what to do, two distinct impressions came to me. Incidentally, many times I do not clearly recognize that I have had a precognitive impression until after the pre-visioned event has occurred. This was to the case here.

At Trinity Episcopal Church just before a eucharistic service there is a table in the middle of the aisle upon just entering the church which holds the host and the wine. Communicants take a communion wafer from the silver ciborium and place it on a communion paten there. In my mind I clearly saw the crystal wine fall to the floor and smash. It seemed to me at the time that it would fall on the left side of the church (north) just in front of the table. I immediately concluded that it was a warning for me to be careful, because I erroneously thought that I might be carrying the wine to the front of the church. It was not until Fred had explained things to me that I found out that the ushers were to find a couple who would carry the “oblations” to the altar.

The second impression that came to me as I was going over the ushers’ procedure was that Harriet Bakewell would come in late and would need assistance to get into her seat. Now there are several people who might need assistance, so I took this to be a sign that I should be prepared to help her if need be.

This morning, then, Stephen had left early to go to choir practice. I walked over to Trinity at about 10:10 a.m., and when I arrived, Fred was there and filled us in on the ushering procedure while the choir was practicing. Stephen took his station on the right, and I on the left, and we began to hand out programs. About five minutes before the service was to began a man had just placed his communion wafer in the plate and was turning left to go to his seat, when his coat caught the crystal wine container.

I saw a whole sequence of events repeated, just as I had in the case of Mary's knocking the spider plant off the kitchen window sill. I was too far away to do anything. Nevertheless, as if in slow motion, I saw the wine cruet tumble to the floor and break and the wine flow out onto the floor. Immediately, the air was heavy with the smell of wine. I was a bit stunned, but Fred and Stephen immediately set about cleaning up the mess.

I decided to anchor the doorway, and continued to hand out programs and smile. In quick order, everything was clean, and the man who had spilled the wine returned with a mop. By the time the service was to begin, a new vessel had been placed in a somewhat more secure place on the table. Fred leaned over to me and said, "That's a first in the history of Trinity!"

About five minutes into the service, Harriet arrived, just as in my impression.

Harriet is a grand old lady. She married Claud Bakewell, a former U.S. Postmaster and Congressman, who just recently died. Claud was the great-great grandson of Robert Bakewell who came to St. Louis in 1848 as part of the Newman Reform Movement. The family has produced an amazing number of clerics and other servants of society. Everyone at Trinity admires her spunk and her many accomplishments in landscape architecture and real estate.

She had decided to drive herself in her 20-year old Mercedes sports car to church this morning, first Sunday after Ascension Thursday. Harriet is under doctor's orders not to drive. She just didn't want to miss this service, however, and afterwards, she called Rev. Bill aside and told him with gratitude how much she enjoyed the homily which he had given. Of course, I remembered my image of the night before, but as it happened, Fred extended his arm and helped her gently to her seat.

Stephen and I were kept quite busy during the service. Attendees had to be counted, the number reported to the M.C., and the children welcomed from church school. Then the offering had to be collected and taken to the altar. After that the bell had to be rung at a number of strategic places in coordination with certain words and actions of the celebrant.

I didn't have my mind on the sermon as much as usual, but I did listen “out of the corner of my ear.” Father Chapman was making the point, in his usual, loving, informal, intimate way, that you haven't experienced joy until you have been crucifIed and then have conquered the suffering. This sermon was in celebration of Christ's Ascension. Suddenly, it struck me as very appropriate that this man had spilled the communion wine.

Isn't that exactly what Jesus Christ had done? He had been crucifIed for no good reason, and His blood had spilled out upon the ground. It seeped into every pore of this planet and impregnated it with His Holy Presence. It rained that day, and that rain washed that blood down the Tiber into the Mediterranean, and it evaporated and rained down on every spot on this Earth.

This is all that we have left of that Holy Body today: the blood that was washed off the Cross, the host and communion wine, and an image like the one left on the Shroud of Turin as Jesus Christ flashed through it and entered that space between Earth and Heaven, where he was to exist until Ascension Thursday. I was grateful for this wine on the floor of Trinity.

After church, Stephen and I had to clean up the pews and close the windows. Spontaneously, as I shut the last window, I decided to ask Helen, our organist, if she would give me organ lessons. I have always wanted to learn to play the organ, and it seemed to me that now, living half a block from Trinity, and feeling this close to the church, was a perfect time to begin to realize this dream of mine.

To my delight, Helen accepted, and we made arrangements to meet this Wednesday morning. As I was discussing this with her, Fred came up to me and said, “We need someone to take Harriet home. It turns out that she drove her herself this morning, even though she wasn't supposed to, and now she doesn't feel up to driving back.”

I recognized, of course, that this was the point of my warning the previous night. Stephen and I agreed to drive her Mercedes back, and Helen would take Harriet in her own car. Helen would then give us a ride back to the Central West End.

We had followed Helen about half way down Euclid, when a woman began honking at me from behind. "Your left rear tire is almost flat."

I stopped the car and had Stephen go running after Helen who had driven on down the street in the slow-moving traffic. He caught up with her and arranged to meet her at Harriet's house after we had had the tire fixed. Harriet had invited us to bring our trunks for a swim, also. I was to stay with the car, and Stephen went home for his foot pump.

At just the moment Stephen drove off, Darrell Thixten happened along the street. I hadn't seen Darrell for over a year, and we were able to chat on this pleasant spring day, and catch up on each others' lives. We recalled the last time we met by chance. Stephen and I had decided to have lunch in Forest Park, and Darrell happened along on the path where we were sitting.

Just as the conversation was ending, Stephen drove up with the pump. We inflated the tire, drove to the Shell station across the street from our condo, and while I was having it fixed, Stephen prepared sandwiches for lunch.

After we had finished lunch, we drove out to Harriet's lovely home in Ladue. She lives on a private street, and, of course, her large yard is landscaped beautifully. There is an L-shaped pool and a reflecting pool, a waterfall, lovely begonias, roses and impatiens. When we arrived, we met Helen just as she was leaving. “Harriet has gone off to a graduation ceremony. Make yourself at home, have a swim. I'm going back to town. And thank you.”

I entered the house, which was unlocked, and as I was placing the keys near the phone, I happened to notice a printed eulogy for Harriet's husband, Claude. He had died in February of this year. I was fascinated, and sat down to read the intricacies of the Bakewell clan. Stephen was soaking his feet in the pool, so I brought out the eulogy and read to him from it while sitting on the patio swing.

After a while we left even though Harriet had not returned. On the way back, I related to Stephen the fact that I had had these precognitive images. I asked him if he had ever had any such experiences. He told me this interesting story.

“When I was married to Harriet (no relation to Harriet Bakewell), I had a dream that I was hit from behind on three separate occasions. It wasn't a few days until I was in the car with Harriet and the girls. We were stopped at a stop sign, and wham, someone hit me from behind. Another few days passed by and I was again hit from behind in a slow-moving line of traffIc. In the dream I was hit three times, in life only two, but I always took that dream to have been a sign for me.”

An interesting variant of this ability in my life and the lives of my family and extremely close friends is something one might call “pre-emotive ability.” I have experienced it with all the members of my immediate family, but most strongly with my brother and sister. A few years back, I awoke one Thursday morning with a grave feeling of impending doom. No thoughts about what was wrong, just this terrible, nagging feeling.

At first, I thought I was depressed, but as I lay there pondering what was going on, I decided that I had no reason to be depressed, and, in fact, was not depressed. I had learned by this time that I have these occasional “emotive premonitions,” and that eventually clarity would come to me. I went on about my day as best I could, but by evening I was absolutely certain that something was wrong with my sister.

I called her that night, and said, “Vicki, how are you!”

“OK,” came the feeble, half-hearted reply.

“Now cut the crap, and tell me how you really are!”

With this, my sister poured out to me this heart-wrenching story about a life derailed. Jerry had been unfaithful to her, and now she was in the middle of an affair. She had a kidney infection, and mom was being very critical of her behavior. We talked and talked, and I invited her to come out and visit me for a few days so that she could get her head together. She came out, I was supportive, and when she went back to Marietta, she and Jerry made up, seriously joined a church, and got their lives on track again.

Now, I had absolutely no knowledge of any of this problem before I called Sis. I simply "knew" at a gut level that something was wrong.

As I look back over what I have written, it becomes apparent to me that these examples are about much more than precognitive awareness. They are about my attitude toward life. Some people might say that I have taken two insignifIcant mental images and one depressed feeling and blown them up into grandiose fantasies. At one time, I might have said the same thing.

But I am learning something about how God talks to us. He writes his messages on the surface of our perceptual fields. If we have a closed heart and mind, we will not see or feel the rich tapestry of connections that link us to Him in amazing ways. However, if we have that willingness the size of a grain of mustard, we can hear Him speak.

It is an extremely subtle thing, this precognitive perception. There is something just a little bit different about ordinary mental images generated out of anxiety or excitement, and the precognitive ones. For one thing, they are many times accompanied by a feeling that something important has been communicated. Just as often as not, however, I get this feeling and yet the actual event does not materialize, or at least, I do not perceive it to have materialized.

But I am learning that I do have these perceptions. Having learned this, my mind is much more open to seeing these connections. I have learned that when these pre-cognized events occur, it is helpful to adopt an open, flowing, even passive attitude—kind of a “let's wait and see what's going to happen now” thing. I have developed a tendency to say “yes” to requests obviously connected to the unfolding web of Divine Communication. There is a certain gentle and holistic alertness about my perception at these times: I allow myself to “dowse” out of the perceptual fIeld those objects and entities which will be my guides to action.

Part of learning to talk to God in this way is learning to suspend our preconceived plans of action. In the scientific mode of knowing, we always know what we are looking for. The data we have and the laws we know lead us to predict that we will fInd this and such. But in coming to know the One God on an one-to-One basis, we do not necessarily know what we are looking for. We only know that we are looking for something. We are willing to follow our feelings and intuition in building an experience, just as I built a religious testimony out of a broken bottle and a flat tire.

And at times like these, as I am in this state of alert passive action, my heart often fIlls and swells with the joy of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I feel more loving and more connected to the people around me. I am able to project acceptance and forgiveness, just because my ordinary expectations of people and situations have been suspended.

The most amazing way that precognitive experience has impinged on my life is not through my own abilities, but rather through the talents of a gifted psychic, Leitha Hill. I first met Leitha through Sheila, who called me a few years back: “Jim, I have just been to the most incredible psychic person. She told me things about myself that no one else could have known, and made some very interesting predictions.”

Sheila had gone to several psychics and astrologers at the time, but she was so adamant about Leitha's ability that I paid Leitha a visit. Our first meeting was in Leitha's home. Leitha is a tall, large black woman. At the time she wore a platinum blond wig, which contrasted startlingly with her café au lait skin. When Leitha enters room, everybody looks!

Leitha is quite personable, a good talker and listener, and you get the feeling that she is a very “old soul,”as they say. I felt that she had “read me like a book,” and was comfortable with my homosexuality and general attitude. All this before words had been exchanged.

Apparently what Leitha does in an initial session is to first win your confIdence by telling you things about yourself that no one else could possibly know. What she said was accurate, but the most unsettling thing she told me was about a very unpleasant incident that had occurred, and which I would have preferred to have been left unnoticed in my past.

The incident that Leitha described concerned a former student teacher of mine. I was supervising secondary student teachers at Collinsville High School. This particular student, I'll call her “Laura,” was heavy into making passes at me. She would sensually stroke my arm or body at the least provocation. She would smile seductively. It was very clear to me that she was “man-hunting.”

I was in the height of my gay liberation days, and this behavior both angered and frightened me. I had always hated it when straight women failed to take a cue from my obvious disinterest, and persisted in being sexual with me. I got so upset with her that I confronted her one day at the high school about this matter. At fIrst she denied it, but later started to cry and admitted to me that she was very envious of boys because she had competed with two brothers for her father's affection. When she found a man that she particularly admired or liked, her way of compensating for a felt inadequacy was to be seductive with him.

I brought this matter to my colleagues' attention, but I was so angry, that I didn't carry it off in a very professional manner. I could sense that they thought I was completely over-reacting, but I couldn't do anything about my intense emotion. Laura and I never did resolve the tension between us, although we did get through the quarter. I had wanted to flunk her out of student teaching, but on the advice of my colleagues, I did not do so.

As it turned out, she married my graduate assistant at the time shortly after she completed the program. “Ha,” I thought to myself, “proof positive that she was man- hunting!”

Leitha described this incident in a fair amount of detail. She then told me the reason why I'd had such an irrational reaction. She told me that this woman had stirred up some heterosexual feelings in me, and that I didn't want to be reminded of this potential in myself. I chose to be homosexual in this lifetime, and I didn't want to have to deal with heterosexual behavior or feelings.

Leitha also described two men that I would be involved with. An older professor type, and one much younger than me. These predictions came true after a fashion, but not on the time-schedule that I had though. Leitha would always say that regarding the “how long until it happens,” that I should remember that with prevision, a “short” time can be as much as a year or more.

I had Leitha to a class I was team-teaching with Merrill Harmin one summer. One of the students in that class had a love-hate attraction to psychic phenomena. Ken wanted to believe, but because of the professional philosophy he had had, he was extremely skeptical. He arranged with the Philosophy Club at SlUE to put on a panel with Leitha as the psychic, Mark Shaffer as a researcher who had studied psychokinesis and remote viewing, and myself as a professor who presented an overview of these "New Age" phenomena.

It was a very interesting seminar. Most of the philosophy professors and students who were there were either silent, doubtful, or openly critical. I had had reservations about this seminar, because I knew that it was difficult to be psychic under the most conducive of circumstances, and these circumstances were clearly hostile. Leitha put on about a 20 minute performance, reporting on the psychic vibes she picked up from people. Had I not already experienced her in a more intimate setting, I would have been skeptical too. All but two of the people were doing their best to “catch her up.” Consequently, she fell back into tried-and-true techniques, such as suggesting that someone in the room had car-trouble, or a death in the family. These statements sounded hokey to begin with.

Still, it is very difficult to be psychic with a person who is resisting you. Imagine how much trouble your family physician would have in treating your illness if you were committed to exposing him/her as a fraud.

One of the interesting little pieces of information that I picked up that night was this. In my talk, I asked the assembled crowd how many of them had read several New Age classics. On my list was The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, The Tao of Physics, Passages about Earth and The Aquarian Conspiracy. Not one of them had read a single book on my list. I did suggest to them that they were essentially ignorant of this literature, and should read some of it before smugly issuing a blanket condemnation of all parapsychological phenomena.

I cannot leave this story about Leitha without telling you about how Leitha's ability was instrumental in getting me my current job, which I love. I went to her about four years ago with no particular agenda. She told me that she saw that I would be making a job change that September. The job would involve having administrative responsibilities, that I would be in a much larger area with a good view to the outside, and that while I would be the first, others would follow.

Unknown to Leitha, it had been suggested to me that I take over the job of managing the Computer Lab in the School of Education. I didn't want to take it for two reasons. I didn't believe that I had any administrative ability, and the job was only one-third time, which meant I would have to both teach two classes and manage the lab.

I decided against taking the job, even though Leitha's advice unsettled me. But I went on for the next three years teaching my computer classes. Another man took the position. In November of 1985, I attended a meeting of the computer moguls in the School of Education. Several people, including myself, came up for a round of criticism for not having done as much with computers as could have been done.

I accepted the criticism and essentially turned myself around. I totally reworked my classes, developed some new ones that were desperately needed, and took a new political interest in getting the lab to go in the right direction. Within six months and much to my surprise, several people had suggested that I should be not only coordinator of the lab but also coordinator of computer resources in the School of Education.

I went back to Leitha. I was still really conflicted about taking this job, because I have never had confidence in my leadership ability. I have always thought of myself as a teacher. “Leitha, it's been suggested that I should become the coordinator of computer resources. Is this the job you spoke of three years ago, and should I take it?”

"Take this job," she replied in her most authoritative psychic-counseling voice. “This is a gift of Spirit to you. You were supposed to have had this job three years ago. You are still supposed to have it. You will be the fIrst; others will follow!”

As a result of Leitha's confident advice, I took the job. Let me say that it has been the single best move I ever made. All of her prediction came true. The lab is large, and overlooks the woods behind SlUE, although there is a parking lot in between. As it turns out, I have a certain talent I never realized I had. I inherited fIve student assistants with this job, and I have been able to maximize the use of their talents by letting them work on what they are actually interested in.

In addition, I have attracted to the school and purchased over $50,000 of computer equipment in the past year. We now have interactive video, desk-top publishing, a masters program that permits a student to design lessons for the computer. Another professor and I have trained the secretaries in administrative applications. And now I am beginning to think about creating an extended program, which would require hiring at least two new faculty members!

There is so much I could tell you about Leitha, but I have time for only one more story. A few years back, she was very short on money. She had the courage to ask her friends for a loan. She asked both Sheila and I for $200. Sheila was very upset and angry about this, for various reasons that I don't have the space to go into.

After much careful thought, I decided to “turn it over to God.” After I had paid all my bills that month, the balance in my checkbook was exactly $200.01. I thought this was hilarious, like God saying, “Sure, go ahead and give her the money. I’ll even leave you a penny.” I decided to simply give this money to Leitha, and I told her so: “Maybe we can remove this block. Maybe I can start the universe flowing by sending you this money.”

I told Sheila that I truly believed in what I was doing. By giving the money to Leitha, rather than lending it, I accomplished two things. I didn't set myself up to resent her, in case she never paid back a loan. But more than that, I know that what goes around, comes around. And sure enough, this job that Leitha gave me knowledge of, and encouraged me to take, has come around. I worked full time this summer for the first time in a long time. That's about $2000 more than I would have made in a typical summer. Have you ever heard of the law of tenfold return? $2000 = 10 X $200!

I can tell you this much. I am on an exciting adventure. I am testing and developing the very frontiers of reality. And I am not crazy. I'm not some mushy-minded would-be Barnum, who wants to bilk the naive public and make bucks. I've paid my dues at the Altar of Science. I understand statistical analysis, its strengths and its limitations. At least, I have looked at the data on both sides. I have read hundreds of books and articles that most philosophers and scientists have never looked at.

Won't you come with me on this adventure? Your reality will surely differ from mine, maybe slightly, maybe radically. But this New Age won't be entered without breaking the frontiers of thought and experience. Explore with me. You are probably a sensitive, too, and you probably know people who are sensitive in this way. You can help me co-create reality with God. Join-circle earth.

Ch. 8: The Dark Decade

I don't particularly want to write about this period in my life. It was a time in which I gradually crawled into a hole. I was lonely, frustrated, angry, immature, and basically had a very limited perspective. The problem was aggravated by my belief that I was becoming more and more knowledgeable. University life can do that to you. It can provide a hiding place as well as a place of enlightenment.

Taken from a social perspective, my undergraduate years were just an extension of my high school days. I lived at home and didn't work. I continued studies much as I had in high school, and I played some more in bands on weekends. With one exception in my senior year, I dated a bit, but backed off when commitment loomed too near.

As a matter of fact, a young woman by the name of Deborah W. had sought me out and manipulated me into a relationship in my sophomore year. She introduced me to Dave Brubeck, and for that gift I will be always grateful. But I sensed that she was becoming extremely dependent on me, and one day I wrote her a note that said I wanted to break up. She totally flipped out. We sat at a table in the student union for eight hours, and she didn't speak a single word. In what now seems to me as a bizarre event, my psychology professor sent her with a friend and me to a psychological clinic in Worthington, Ohio. We left her there, and she never returned to college.

During this same time, my gift for song writing began to manifest itself. The melodies were beautiful, but the lyrics were more a reflection of my internal confusion than of art. The songs were love songs, always written either to a girl at a distance, or one who had rejected me. I want to share the lyrics of one of these songs with you. Looking back on these words, I get a lot of insight into my frame of mind at the time. I can't think of a clearer example of an approach-avoidance complex.

I Was Sad and Lonely by Jim Andris, 1957

I was sad and lonely,
short and kind of homely.
Then you, my one and only,
you became a part of my life.
You were God's creation,
beyond imagination.
I gained your admiration
and asked you to become my wife.
I recall the sweetness of your lips yet
The night that we met in the park.
But that night the spark was missing when our lips met,
And you turned and left me standing in the dark.
Now I'm still sad and lonely,
still short and kind of homely.
But you, my one and only,
you're very much a part of my life.

From an academic point of view, I got a broader perspective on what there was to know in my undergraduate years. Science and math were still my forte, but I explored other subjects. Starting in my junior year, I took some courses in philosophy from Elizabeth Steiner Maccia: ethics, philosophy, philosophy of science, and logic. She was to have a dramatic influence on my life.

After graduation I worked for a year and some months as a research technologist at Republic Steel Research Center outside of Cleveland, Ohio. As I have previously mentioned, I managed to stay close to several high school friends during this time. However, I became dissatisfied with my job. Looking back, I believe I just wasn't willing to grow up yet.

I should mention that during this time I pursued a relationship with Luellen Watson., whom I had started to date in my senior year in college. Although no ring was involved, I thought of her as my fiancee. She had begun graduate school in foreign languages at Illinois State University, and I visited her there once. However, my homosexuality was preying on my mind, and I eventually wrote and told her I wanted to discontinue the relationship. I did not give her the true reason, except to say that it was my fault. Luellen was deeply wounded, and wrote me a long, long letter in which she expressed her grey feelings. I was bothered by this episode in my life until just recently, when I wrote Luellen a letter explaining my actions and apologizing.

I got accepted into a masters degree program in mathematics at Ohio State University, which I entered in the Fall of 1961. I lived that first year in a single room on $1000. My math studies proceeded at a minimally acceptable level. One major reason for this was that my mind was constantly occupied with music. I still played the practice pianos at Ohio State for hours.

While I was in this program, my two best friends were Tom Breiter and Don Bonar, both also in the math program. We studied together, and once a week, Tom and I went out and got drunk out of our minds. I also had made contact with the brother of a musician I had known in Marietta, and continued to play the piano in bands on the weekends.

Sometime during the second year at Ohio State, I moved upstairs into an attic apartment for $60 a month. It was a big place, and I just felt lonelier than before. I can remember drinking and crying to myself in the evenings. I bought myself a Harmony guitar for $68, that still sounds fairly good today. I began writing pop songs again.

As I got closer and closer to the end of my program, I greatly feared the comprehensive examinations. In the spring of 1963, I began to carry on a silly flirtation with Mariam, who was still in Cleveland and also fed up with her job. We planned to and did run off to Miami for a few weeks to see Mo and Jim Heltman. We had a marvelous time sunning ourselves in the Keys, but when the vacation was over, reality sat on my face.

My parents were willing to take me in. I spent a year at home. I convinced myself I wanted to be a composer. I wrote a sonata and several short pieces. I was casting around for support in my music career, but nothing ever came of it. I was too afraid to go out on my own. I just kept waiting to be discovered or helped by somebody.

The summer of 1964, Myra asked if she could come and stay for a time with me. I think that was too much for my folks. I came home one day and found my bed on the side porch. Mom said that dad was remodeling the bedroom and that I could sleep on the couch for a while. I was furious. Mom and dad deny that they were trying to edge me out of the house. Whether they were or not is immaterial at this point. I needed a nudge.

There were some good things about my time at home. Mom and dad had moved to the country while I had been at Ohio State. It was a beautiful farm of 50 acres on the top of a hill. You could see the green hills of the Ohio River Valley with the river miles in the distance. There was even a little graveyard on the place, a barnyard with cattle, woods and a spring. I loved walking out over the crest of the hill through the waving grass. But before I left, Dad had moved us back to town.

Also, my brother and I (Tom had just graduated from high school) became closer. We played piano and sax a la Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond quite well. We drank and joked, and talked about a lot of things. Tom liked to speak to me in German. And mom, grandmother, some friends and I played cards.

Some time in late summer, Elizabeth Maccia (my college philosophy teacher) called me and offered me a research associateship at Ohio State. I took it. This was one of the turning points of my life. In fact, this was truly the point at which I left home. All my moves before had been just that, moves in response to the question, "Well, what are you going to do now?" I didn't know, and so I moved in the easiest direction.

Elizabeth became my mentor, and I also adopted her as a parent figure. She set a style for me, and I adopted it with great enthusiasm. Philosophy was the only knowledge worth pursuing. There was a correct and an incorrect philosophy. Those with the incorrect philosophy were foolish. The university was a community of rational beings.

Elizabeth was a system builder. She was always drawing schemas on the blackboard. Her writing was also schematic. She called her method "philosophical analysis," which involved clarifying the logic of education and knowledge about education. She was short on details, but her diagrams were powerful and generally correct.

Elizabeth was a writer. She had a long list of publications and travelled frequently to conferences. She brought over $100,000 in federal research grants to Ohio State. One of those grants paid for my masters degree education.

When I got to Ohio State, I was also confronted with Elizabeth's husband George Maccia. George was a mild-mannered man, just as much of Italian extraction as Elizabeth was German. He was also much shorter than Elizabeth. Her direct, logical style of inquiry was balanced by his exploratory and associationistic thinking. They were a study in contrasts.

I worked through a masters degree in philosophy of education under Elizabeth. I had finally started to progress at the masters level. I also got certified to teach math in the high schools of Ohio. But I hated teaching, and student teaching was extremely difficult for me. I flunked it the first time around. I was assigned teaching general mathematics in an inner city junior high. My university supervisor sensibly assigned me the second time to teaching senior high calculus at a rich suburban school.

My first year back at Ohio State, I roomed with a fellow graduate student and research associate, Ken Thompson. He was also taken by Elizabeth, but was quite a bit more independent and eccentric than me (if that is possible). We had a six-foot snake cage in our apartment. One of Ken's pets was a rattlesnake. One night I came home late and found some of the snakes out of the cage and staring up at me from the floor. I told him: “Ken, you or the snakes.” He moved.

One of the good things about my stay in Columbus, Ohio was that I talked my dad and mom into letting brother Tom finish his undergraduate education at OSU and room with me. The rent was $120 a month and dad payed Tom's share. I believe that this saved Tom from a failed life. He got his German degree, and today he is Chairman of the Modern Languages department at Marietta High School.

Tom and I really enjoyed each other, although we bickered. We made homophobic jokes about one of our effeminate roommates. While I was rooming with him, I never admitted to Tom that I was gay, and I finally asked Larry to move when he started having male "dates" in. Tom and I carried on great practical jokes, and played a lot of music together. If it wouldn’t detain the story line too much, I could insert quite a few laughs here.

Tom and I had our jokes that only we understood. One thing we dearly loved to do was to make up long, long stories with punch lines that were musical puns, like "Wrap Sodie in Blue" and "I Can, Teeny Turner!" This story would be told by the one with great seriousness, and the other would taunt with good-natured impatience: "Yeah, yeah. Right. Sure. Go on."

Tom and I also listened with deepest dedication to the pop music stars of the day. We loved and discussed the Beatles. We actually made charts of the progress of songs like “Sweet Talkin' Guy,” by the Chiffons. Somehow, when you're that age, pop music holds out an ineffable promise of happiness.

We had our fights too. I had a terrible temper. I remember one time I was singing a song and playing the guitar. When I got to a certain high note, from the other room, out of sight, came the mocking voice of my brother.

I stopped, waited, and proceeded from the beginning. The high note came again, and again the mocking voice. I said, "Tom, if you do that again, I'm going to throw my show right through that antique chair you love so well. "

I stopped, waited, and proceeded from the beginning. The high note came again, and again the mocking voice. I threw the shoe. It went threw the chair back and broke the glass door on the china closet. Tom said, "I don't believe you did that."

I stopped, waited, and proceeded from the beginning. The high note came again, and again the mocking voice. We both rolled on the floor with laughter.

I cannot pass by this point without noting my dear friends, the Breiters. Tom had married Mary Alice after I left the math program. Tom, Mary Alice, my brother Tom and I played bridge, pinochle, and had pizza and spaghetti two or three times a week. When their first daughter Debbie came, we formed an extended family of five.

Recently I visited Tom, Mary Alice, Debbie, and her three younger brothers in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. It was as if the fifteen years had never been. We played cards and made home made ice cream. We talked about the good old times. We kidded Mary Alice about her love for chocolate. How fortunate I am to have made friends over the years for whom time and distance are no barrier to love.

I graduated from Ohio State with a masters in philosophy of education in Summer, 1966. Elizabeth told me that she was going to Indiana University, and that in a year she might have work for me. I decided to stay at Ohio State for a year and take courses in the history of philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics and ethics.

We're beginning to approach the end of this dark decade. It is now 1967. The Beatles, mini-skirts, the summer of love, the beginning criticism of the Vietnam War have been, and student protests are just starting. I have heard about it in music. But I haven't felt it, precisely because I have been more and more denying the sexual part of me. Academia was becoming more and more comfortable.

I entered the doctoral program at Indiana University feeling very much like a big cheese. Elizabeth and George were the hot new profs on the block and I thought I was their prize student. I defended Elizabeth loyally in every course. I realize now that she was a substitute for my mother. At the time, of course, I would have been terribly angry at such a suggestion.

I think that Elizabeth enjoyed all the extra attention too, at first. Besides, I had a very good mind and was a good foil for her ideas. But as the years wore on, our relationship became a bit strained. As she acquired new students, she tried to wean me a bit, but of course, I would have none of that. Here it was over twenty years since first grade, but I still wanted to be the “best little boy in the class.”

In the meantime, I was learning a heck of a lot about philosophy and philosophy of education, especially philosophical analysis. Analysis of educational concepts and disciplines was the big rage and George and Elizabeth were the institutional purveyors of that methodology. I was still living in a single room in the home of an older lady at Bloomington, Indiana. As usual, I had the ability to have all sorts of friends, but stay carefully out of any sexual relationships with women.

One woman in particular threw a chilling challenge toward me. Her name was Lorraine O., and it turned out that she had developed a good strong crush on me. This was also a mature, sexy woman with considerable charm. One night after a grad student beer blast at her home, I ended up in bed with her. There was no way out, I was trapped. I didn't want to admit that I was homosexual. We did some sexual exploration, but I was nervous and tense and so there was no sexual intercourse. I was traumatized by the situation, and confessed my homosexuality to her. She told me that she had actually surmised as much, but just wanted me so badly that she couldn't help herself.

We talked about this, and she gave me the name of one Dr. Wolpe at the University of lllinois. He was the famous behaviorist who professed successful treatment of homosexuals by applying electrical shocks to the genitals while the patient viewed same-sexed bodies. I actually set up an appointment with him and drove all the way to Urbana to see him. He described the procedure to me, and it was clear to both of us that I had no intention of going through with the treatment. In fact, towards the end of the meeting, he said to me, "Well, even if you decide not to have the treatment, you can still accomplish a lot on your own by looking at pictures of nude women and masturbating. It is very important when you do so, that you masturbate to orgasm." I tried this, but it was an ordeal. There was absolutely nothing erotic about a woman's body for me. I always would have to cheat and fantasize a little muscle or a penis and balls hidden away in all that feminine softness or I couldn't even maintain an erection. I finally just gave up. I decided that I just wouldn't be a sexual being. But that didn't work, of course, and we were back to the masturbation-guilt cycle.

One of the things I loved about Indiana University was the lovely new ten story library. I loved learning, and there were new and rare books on every conceivable subject. I had acquired a carroll in the library, which meant that I could roam the stacks and keep books on my shelf. One day, while roaming around, I chanced upon a section of books on homosexuality. This was 1969, the year of that the New York City drag queens at the Stonewall bar fought back at the raiding police, but I had not heard of that event. I thought to myself, well, why not find out about this malady that I have. You have to remember that I had kept this a total secret for the first thirty years of my life, and had spent the better part of my energies living around it.

I hauled several books back to my carroll, among which was the Wolfenden report. I read about the possible decriminalization of homosexuality. There were also many psychoanalytical treatises which classified homosexuality as a sickness, but their tone was not always negative towards the homosexual person, as opposed to the “malady” itself.

I also had heard that George Maccia had some interesting books hiding on the top shelf of his office. One night when I was in the office alone (I had a desk there, too), George's office door was ajar. I snuck in and crawled up on a chair, rummaging around for these books. I uncovered the Kama Sutra, which was of no interest, and several other books. But I also found a copy of Last Exit to Brooklyn. Here in this book were tales of homosexuals who were human beings; not ogres. One was a drag queen, another was a gruff blue collar worker trapped in a relationship with a wife.

I began to get the faint glimmerings that there might be some ways to express this deeply hidden part of me. That there were real people, some of whom might even be half-way decent, who were homosexuals. Also, I had observed a fairly open coterie of homosexuals who ate at the cafeteria. They were sometimes embarrassingly fem for me, but they always seemed to be having an uproariously good time, and I longed to make their acquaintance.

The Dark Decade was about to end, and on an up beat. It was early in 1970. I was at a party at George and Elizabeth's house. I had made spaghetti for 30 people. (This was the party where Micky Keiter fell while carrying two plates of spaghetti, one in each hand, down the Maccias' wrought iron spiral staircase.—five steps on her bottom, bump, bump, bump, and she didn't drop a single strand of spaghetti.) I had had plenty of wine. I was standing around talking with some friends, and suddenly, with total spontaneity, I started talking about what an ordeal it was to still be in school at age 32. I said that I thought I would go crazy if I didn't get out and get a job. I wanted to earn some money, have a home, have a productive job.

The next day I found out that I had totally irritated Elizabeth. First of all, she was of the opinion that if you left the program without doing your dissertation, you wouldn't finish the degree. She saw my open statements as undermining her position. She called me into the office and read me my beads. She told me frankly that I had embarrassed her, and that I needed to be more careful about what I said in public.

But Phil Smith, on the other hand, had a different perspective. He was chairman of the department, a very down-home, practical guy, yet a very sharp pragmatist with a couple of best-selling books to his credit. And he liked me. He took me aside and told me confidentially that maybe it was time for me to leave, and that he would help me find a job. As it turned out, Jerome Popp was a former student in the department who had gotten a job at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville the year before and finished his degree on the job. He, his wife, Katie, and I were very close friends. He got me an interview with the faculty of the Foundations of Education Department there. I impressed them all, and I got the job. For the second time in my life, when I really needed a job, it was there.

Ch. 9: Letter to Rev. Chapman

July 19, 1987

Rev. William Chapman 600 N. Euclid
St. Louis MO 63108

Dear Father Chapman:

This letter is about the relationship that exists between Byron Davidson and myself. I am telling you this story, as nearly as I can being clear about my motives, for the following reasons. First, it appears that it has fallen to Trinity Parish to care for Byron in his last days on earth. Second, I need to share with someone the full story of this tortured life. I want to feel that someone knows my story, and probably, I'm not entirely sure that I don't need guidance in this matter. Finally, I think it would help you to hear this story in full. You'll get it from me with minimal bias. I thank you in advance for taking the time that this requires.

Byron and I go back a long way—to 1974. I met Byron in a gay bar called the Red Bull which used to be in St. Louis. He, Jerry Carwile, now the editor of the local gay magazine Viewpoints, and I became close that summer and fall. We used to go down to the corner of Euclid and McPherson to the old Potpourri and dance the evening away.

There was never really any sexual relationship between us, although we did spend the “obligatory” one night together. Byron was to become one of my most important teachers. I don't know how much you know about this new metaphysical movement called “New Age,” but Byron was fully on the tracks of it at this early date. He was a voracious reader, and he put one book after another in front of me. “Read this and get back to me,” he'd say, “and I'll give you another one you should read.”

The very first book he gave me was William Irwin Thompson's Passages about Earth. As you may know, Thompson has intimate connections with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC. We also were caught up in the atmosphere of sexual liberation and exploration that characterized the early and middle seventies. Often times we cried on each other's shoulder when this or that affair went sour. Later we would share battle stories concerning our efforts for gay rights.

I have wonderful memories of those early years. One time Byron and I packed up in his old, beat-up VW bus and made out for Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they were holding an large conference on gay rights. We heard speeches, met people. There was a huge dance in the basement of the local VFW, of all places. We were in the heights of our glory, two very intelligent people damaged by our upbringing, finally feeling the right to be alive, and the joy of living life to the fullest. Both of us met men at that conference who were to be important in our lives, and we shared it “like sisters” as Byron used to say.

As the seventies wore on, Byron and I both became involved in gay activism in St. Louis and at our respective colleges. We often compared notes, our circle of friends crossed, we were involved in groups together such as the Gay Academic Union and the Gay Hot Line. In 1979 we cohosted a local gay radio show called "GayTalk" for almost a year.

About 1980, I began to become aware of a change in Byron. It turned out that Byron was an alcoholic. Byron has shared his early life with me, and apparently it was not pretty. He calls himself an abused child. He left home at age 15, and was basically a street kid who got smart and educated himself. But somewhere along the line he picked up some very negative self-images.

He used to describe himself alternatively as “the Ice Queen” and “the Dragon Lady.” I can tell you that many people, including myself, have been the recipient of both the ice and the fire. From what I can tell, he could be viciously confrontative in class, and yet many students testified that he had opened their minds. The administration at BAC where he teaches has wanted to get rid of him for years, and he in turn has more and more hated his job.

After 1980 our relationship became less satisfying. As a matter of fact, I now believe I know what was going on. Invariably, when Byron would get into trouble, he would show up on my doorstep. But it was more than this. We were psychically linked. I have this ability anyway with people I care about. I would always know when he was in trouble, and frequently I would call him.

I have helped Byron to his feet many, many times, and just as invariably, as soon as he began to feel well again, he would be off on a new dangerous pattern. I could always tell when this was about to happen, because he would start talking about “being bizarre” and “upping his bizarre quotient.” The things he did often were bizarre and had the effect of leading him into feelings of isolation.

In 1981 Byron developed an extremely severe case of hepatitis—type D, which doctors know less about. He has fought chronic liver disease from that day on. He almost died. Some of his friends did not want to be around him because of their fear of the disease, but I stood by him through this time.

I don't remember the timing, but another thing that soured him was a relationship with a man named "Chet." Way back in the sixties, Byron had a lover for six years named "Frank" who was killed in an automobile accident. Byron never really found a replacement until Chet, but that relationship did not work out.

During 1982 and 1983, I was in fact getting my own act together. I had developed a peace with God, and was traveling around the country meeting interesting people. I don't have strong memories of Byron during this time. The likelihood is that we were moving in different directions. He was going on a self-destructive path, and I was moving off of a self-destructive path, one that it is not necessary to relate here.

I do remember that towards the end of this period I had a huge party at my Laclede home and invited a hundred people. Byron came to that party drinking. As soon as I spotted him with a beer can in his hand, I walked up to him and said, "Byron, what are you doing."

He replied, "I'm drinking beer. “

"Well, then, stop it!" I commanded.

Of course, he didn't stop. As was always the case, whenever Byron decided to drink, he avoided me like the plague. Eventually, one of his AA buddies helped him on the wagon again.

At my 45th birthday party, I invited only eight people: “the people in all the world that I knew without a doubt loved me and I loved them.” Byron was on the guest list, but he called me up at the last minute and cancelled out. I suspect now that he stood me up for the beer can.

After the bout with hepatitis, Byron was under treatment with Bob Packman for chronic hip pain. Bob put him on an anti-inflammatory drug called Butazolidin for months. As a consequence of this, and of course the earlier damage to his liver, he again developed a chemically-induced hepatitis which almost took his life. He called me one day and said that he had only six months to live.

By this time, I had studied holistic metaphysics and medical practice, and I had also been to the Shealy Pain and Rehabilitation Institute in Springfield, Missouri. There I had learned amazing things, about the miracles the new holistic practice was working. I had been successfully treated for a ruptured disc there, when two St. Louis doctors had consigned me to the knife. I had long since given up Bob Packman as a physician, just because he was not holistic in orientation, and had not helped me after 1980 or so.

I told Byron about my extreme faith in the Shealy Clinic. I called Norm Shealy and described Byron's case to him. Shealy thought he could help. We packed Byron off to the Clinic for a few weeks. He came back healed. They tried a new drug “Flagel” on him and it killed the lingering hepatitis virus.

Byron seemed to be a new man. He started going to the gym religiously. He went to three or four AA groups a week. He looked really good. I told Byron, “You know, kiddo, every time you go off by yourself and don't stay in contact with me, you get in trouble. Why don't you keep in touch more, and we can support each other.” Byron agreed.

I had started a pain support group after returning from the Clinic, and my principal motivation, beyond helping myself, was to give Byron some support. I called several times, I did what I could to encourage him, but he never showed up. I might add that Stephen was with me at this time, and while Byron was in need, he got support from both Stephen and me. We made him welcome in our home, or at least we thought we were doing that.

Incidentally, Belleville Area College was not pleased by all the work Byron had missed. In addition, he kept moving. He just never seemed to be happy any place he lived after 1980. He came more and more to hate his job. It has to be said that they keep terrible instructional loads at BAC. I don't think I could take what Byron did. He frequently would face six hours of instruction a day. And he really didn't like teaching. Byron is basically reclusive.

I'm not certain of the time frame, but there are at least two more events I must tell you about before we come up to the present. The fIrst has to do with Byron's lifelong friend David Schlitt, who lives in Alton. Byron had given up his apartment on the 10th floor of Hampden Hall, and moved to Alton to live with David. They had been the closest confIdants for twenty years.

After Byron had lived there for a year or so, if my memory serves me right, he got one of his itches and decided that he had to enter a monastery. There was a Benedictine abbey at Peveley, Missouri at the time. Byron turned in his resignation to BAC, sold literally tens of thousands of dollars of antique furniture and beautiful glass at an auction for a small fraction of its worth, and moved out on David, lock stock and barrel.

I faithfully visited him at the abbey, along with Stephen. After a few weeks, I could sense that Byron was sorry he had made the move. When he first moved there, he would talk to me about how he was “on the inside” with several of the leaders at the abbey. I sensed at that time that things were not going to work out. He began to visit the baths on Thursday night. One time he asked the abbot if he could go out, and he received the reply, “No, that will not be possible. We need you to stay and cover the phones.” With this, Byron had one of his tantrums. He told me he didn't have to be treated like a child. He left the abbey, and David took him back in.

It wasn't long before Byron was dissatisfIed with his life with David. David is a school teacher, a good and simple person, who shared Byron's love of home, antiques and classical music, and who probably did get a little boring to live with.

He told this life-long friend that he didn't want to see him anymore. I tried to talk him out of it, but I saw that he was determined to do it, and that there was no use in protesting. Byron had told me on many occasions that David was in fact his lover, and that they did everything together except have sex. So this breakup was the equivalent of a divorce. David was deeply wounded. He called me on several occasions and tried to sort out what had went wrong.

We are about up to 1985 at this point. I lost track of Byron for almost a year, despite the fact that when he got out of the monastery, I again warned him of his self-destructive tendencies, and advised him to stay close with me. I may say as an aside here that after many years of trying to decipher and understand Byron's behavior, I came to the conclusion that while he loved me in some sense, he really didn't like me very much. When I settled down, I became “un-bizarre,” and that bored him.

Over that year, I would occasionally run into Byron at the Majestic. He hung around with a guy by the name of Phil Bauer, whom I immediately pegged as a user and a hanger-on. But it was clear that Byron was committed to making this his major friendship. On a few occasions, it was equally clear that Byron was drinking. But I said to myself, this is Byron's choice, I cannot help him if he does not want to change.

Some time in 1986, Byron discovered that he had AIDS. He had a large mole on his back that had developed Kaposi's, and he had it removed. He remained under treatment with Bob Packman and his psychiatrist of some years, Dr. Ann Richardson. My psychic ability was working, because I called him on the very day he had the biopsy taken. He probably wouldn't have called me this time, but he was glad to hear from me.

One of the first thing that happened was that Phil dropped him like a hot potato. We discussed this, and I found out that Byron had loaned Phil money which he never repaid. I told Byron that I thought his taste in friends was sometimes poor, and I again reminded him of his need to stay in touch with me.

Byron tried to have a rapprochement with David Schlitt, but David would have none of it. They got together, but David was polite, mostly silent, and glad when the meeting was over.

From the day that he found out about AIDS, Byron started to talk about quitting his job. He immediately began to imply that I should take him in with Stephen and me. After much careful thought, I decided against this.

It was relatively clear at the time that actually Byron was in fairly good shape for an AIDS patient. He told me that Packman had put him in the least serious category (apparently there is a rating scale from 1 to 6 of seriousness of AIDS). Packman’s approach was to keep Byron off medication and have him put on weight, reduce stress, get exercise and rest and so forth. Given his history of liver damage, I believe that was a sensible move, although I have not always agreed with Packman. The fact that Byron has never had a T-cell count (so he told me), I believe is just incompetent if it is true.

At the time Byron was very alienated from religion. I got him to go once or twice to the Cathedral. He would sit beside me, yet not participate. I could sense his anger at his situation, but I could do nothing about it. I also got him coming to Trinity later in the year. I told him what a warm, caring place it was, and that he needed this kind of spiritual home.

Around the turn of the year, the stress of Byron's job began to get to him. He began to drink again. I know this, because one night this February, he called me up at 1:30 in the morning. He was at the police station. He had been fooling around on North Grand for God knows what reason, and the cops picked him up on suspicion. He was in a jogging suit and didn't even have any identification with him. I went down and got him. He was sitting there on the bench looking totally crestfallen. I went up to him and he had been drinking heavily. I was frankly disgusted with him. I didn't criticize him, I just listened to his story, took him home, dropped him off and told him to call me.

A couple of months later, he was mugged as he entered his Westminster apartment late one evening. The thugs took his money and left him with a serious concussion and 31 stitches in his head. I found out about this about a week after it happened. I went over to his house, and one of his students, Debbie had been staying with him. He looked horrible. It occurred to me at that time that Byron was on his way out.

After that, I tried my best to stay in closer touch. It just turned out that this has been my busiest year at work, filled with responsibility that I frankly enjoy. Still, I called him regularly and asked him if he needed someone to go shopping. His AIDS buddy, Ron, was apparently taking pretty good care of him then, because he usually said he had groceries in the house. Stephen and I took him out several times for lunch or had him over for dinner.

About this time, it became apparent that he was going to have to go on disability. Packman told him he needed to reduce the stress. He began this process, and also began looking at his finances with the help of the lover of his buddy, Ron. He decided that he must move. He asked me to help him find a place, but the next week, told me that he had found the place he is currently in. Stephen and I bought his dining room table from him, and Stephen helped him arrange things with the movers. I feared that this stress would be hard on him, but I was so busy at work that I had very little time to help. He got moved, and at first, he didn't want me to come over. I have found out in the past, that he frequently does this when he is drinking, so I should have suspected this. But somehow, I thought with the seriousness of his condition, that he might try a bit more valiantly to preserve his life. I got him a book to read on AIDS that used the holistic approach.

Now we are nearly up to the present. (By the way, it just occurs to me that I had thought once Byron joined Trinity, that he would go to service with us and join us after lunch. But he early made it clear that he would go to the 8:00 service by himself.)

A couple of weeks ago Byron asked me to help him put up curtains to make his place more presentable. I agreed, and told him that at my first opportunity I would buy the curtain rods and come over. I went over in a few days and measured his windows and bought the rods at Venture. He called me that Saturday night and said, “I had a bad fall in the bathroom last night. I can't see you today. I'll call you later in the week.” I should have suspected again that he was drinking, but somehow I didn't. We forget how perverse is the bottle.

That Friday night, I stopped off at National. As I was returning to my car with the sack of groceries, I spotted Byron leaning heavily on a grocery cart with two large brown bags in it as he pushed his way to his car. I walked swiftly across several rows of parked cars towards Byron. As I got close to him, I could see that he was in terrible shape. I stood at the side of his cart and looked right at him. He stared blankly at the figure before him. His face was puffy, red, and covered with scaly white flakes of skin. Finally, he recognized me.

“How are you, Byron?”

“Not good.”

“I called a couple of times this week, but I wasn't able to reach you.”

He pulled his hair back from his forehead and revealed an ugly black scab. “I fell in the bathroom last week. I have a concussion.” As he said this, I happened to glance down in the sacks in his basket. I saw that he had twenty-four cans of beer. Fear and concern swept through my heart. We continued to stare at each other.

“You're checking out, aren't you?” I finally managed.

“Yes, I'm calling it quits. This is too much to expect of anyone.”

My mind raced back to the many times when I had stood facing Byron under similar circumstances. I thought of all the critical illnesses I had helped him with, all the times he had cried on my shoulder about a lost lover, his rotten job, and his demanding friends. "I don't know what to say," I finally managed weakly.

“I know,” he managed, just as weakly.

After a few more seconds of futilely staring at him, I turned on my heal and walked away. I never looked back. I went into the grocery store, but my mind was hardly on the shopping. I was almost trembling with emotion. Rage, sadness, compassion, disgust, commitment, all these feelings welled up inside me. My mind raced, because frankly, I really didn't know what to do.

When you have deal for years with an alcoholic, you do reach a breaking point. And I had reached mine. I managed to finish the shopping and went home. I told Stephen briefly that I had discovered that Byron was drinking again, and when I composed myself, I would tell him the story. Finally, I called the AIDS hotline and talked to Mike. I told them the details.

“I’m really angry with Byron right now,” I said, "and I don’t think I would be the most helpful person to be around him. He has a buddy by the name of Ron, but apparently, Ron hasn't been around as much lately. Besides, he has a bloody wound on his forehead, and I don’t really feel comfortable trying to deal with him in this condition.”

“Well, as long as you don’t have any open cuts on your hand, you can go ahead and help him, but I understand how you feel. That's what we’re here for. I’ll see if I can get someone to do something about this.”

Stephen and I were supposed to be at Sheila's for dinner and an entertaining evening. I called and explained to her that I would be late.

“I’m really concerned that you don't talk about Byron this evening. I think you’re a dear, loyal, caring friend, but I’m really angry, angry with Byron right now!”

“I'm angry with him, too, Sheila, and I won't talk about him, but I thought you needed to know the situation.”

“Sure thing, babe, see you in a while.”

Just as we were leaving for Sheila's who should beep his horn than Tom Bolman. He and Robert were just on their way home. I motioned Tom over to the curb and unloaded this story about Byron to them. Tom has been very active in Effort for Aids work, and I thought he might be of some assistance in getting Byron help. I could see that Tom was crestfallen about this news.

On the way out to Sheila's I talked a bit more with Stephen about the problem. “This was no accident that I met Byron in the parking lot. He was trying to avoid me, but the universe arranged for me to have this information. You can't help an alcoholic until they want to be helped. This is beyond my competence to deal with. Byron needs professional medical and psychiatric help. I'll deal with him when and if he becomes sober again.”

"Do you want to mastermind about it?" Stephen ventured.
I did mastermind with Stephen. “I affIrm that I attract to myself peace of mind and a loving attitude toward Byron, and that I am able to relate to him in a way that is for the good of all concerned.”

Stephen repeated my affirmation.

We are at the end of this story, Father Chapman. I'm sorry that it took so long to unload. I've had a few days to think about things since my last confrontation with Bryon. I got clear, for example, that my anger, while understandable, was also fueled by the many other alcoholics that I have witnessed destroying their lives and others. My father, for one, terrorized my childhood during his frequent malevolent binges. Thank God he now does not drink.

I also got clear that I am simply tired of dealing with this self-destructive man. It occurred to me the other morning that he really does want to die. In fact, I honestly believe that if I hadn't strongly intervened on at least one other occasion, he would have been dead a few years back. Why should I continue to fIght his death wishes?

I know now that I will come back into Byron's life (to any degree) only under two conditions. First of all, I will not deal with his drunkenness. He would have to be sober. Second, it would have to be at his request. I'm not even sure that Byron particularly wants me in his life. Probably by now he is so caught up in his own death process, that he just needs some compassionate assistance in the transition. I don't really think he would miss me, although it might help if he knew I was not holding any grudges.

I said to Stephen, “You know, if Byron had done to someone else what he has done to himself, he would either be serving a life sentence or be condemned to death for murder. He has systematically murdered himself.”

It's true, I was furious with him for a while. I bitched so much to Stephen and Robert that they bawled me out. It hurt my feelings at first, but they were right to call me to task. I saw that I was as much angry at myself as Byron. I said, “I have compassion for the present being that is suffering, but I am disgusted with the soul that has consistently made these bad choices.” And believe me, Father Chapman, there are things that I haven't told you about Byron that we can only pray to God for his mercy and forgiveness for this tortured soul. And I do pray for God's mercy for Byron.

But now, I am slowly but steadily forgiving Byron. Telling this story has really helped me to see how wretchedly unhappy his life in the last few years has been. He has truly suffered hell on earth, and I cry now as I write these words. But there is nothing more I can do. I have done everything I know how to do to change his path. I feel that now it is time to accept his choice. I pray for a speedy end to his suffering, that is all. Given what has gone down, I can no longer pray for his life, for I fear that these prayers may actually create needless suffering.

I really don't know what all this means. Perhaps some time in the far future, or after my earthly death, I will have a better perspective. Thank you again for listening for me, and please pray for my peace of mind and wisdom in this matter.

Sincerely yours,

Jim Andris

Ch 10:Dreams

[d note: I have added this chapter to the original work for a couple of good reasons. 1) I wrote this piece just during the same time period that I wrote the book. 2) In the book I don’t spend much time developing the story of Stephen’s and my relationship. The inserted chapter presents a snapshot of an aspect of my personality as it was then which I had struggled greatly over. 3) Dreams are an important portal to aspects of minds that are a bit mysterious, but they also are a portal for many to “the other side.”]

I will need to talk about the importance of dreams in New Age thinking at some point. This morning I had a very important dream, and I am taking the time now to set down the circumstances surrounding the dream.

I got up yesterday morning feeling rather sluggish and down. I had a lot to do at work, but I also had been trying this weekend to get hold of Byron with no success. This concerned me because he really is too weak to go out much, and the portent was of his drinking again.

I called Byron and reached him. Byron was being very guarded, and frankly sounded to me like he was drinking. I told him that I had trying to get hold of him and asked where he had been. I asked him point blank if he had been drinking. He said no. I told him to let me know if he needed anything and said goodby.

As soon as I hung up, I received a shock. Steven tore into me, saying that my tone of voice was very bad with Byron, that I was into my rescuer script and that I was punishing Byron, that if he had been Byron, he would have hung up on me, and that I was not helping him with this tone of voice.

My heart pounded and raced from this attack, or what I perceived to be an attack. It took me a while to sort things out. I followed Stephen into the kitchen and asked him why he had jumped on me so hard. He repeated that I was into my rescuer script, and that I needed the information. I replied that he didn't have to deliver the information in such an angry manner. I could see that he softened at this point. His tone of voice became much more soothing. But I don't respond well to this kind of attack, and it's not the first time this has happened.

I walked out of the kitchen. thinking this over, still really emotionally shaken. It was like someone had pulled the rug out from under me. I walked back into the kitchen. “I’m going to give you another interpretation of what happened. I've noticed that every time I start really feeling loving toward you, you pull one of these attacks. And the fact is that this last week, you've been working so hard on your job, and I really thought you did a fine job. I have been feeling closer to you because of your courage and dedication.

“I realize that you would prefer to have more sex in our relationship. But the fact is that I have been feeling much more loving. You know that your mother gave you negative strokes when you were a child. Maybe you just aren't comfortable with the amount of intimacy I was offering you, and you created a space for yourself with this outburst.”

I paused, and then said “What do you think?”

Stephen was kneeling down cleaning out the refrigerator. “I don't know,” he mumbled.

I left for work, and as so often happens when this kind of situation occurs, I found myself into a merry-go-round of imagined negative dialog with Stephen. I hate this, but I can't seem to stop it. It's as if some low-level adaptive mechanism wants to perpetuate the fight to victory. So I began some of the New Age techniques I have used before.

I tried affirmations, which are really a form of mental programming. “I affirm that I attract to myself absolute clarity with respect to the purposes and causes of this morning's incident, and that as a consequence of this clarity, I can move beyond this matter and focus on the positive aspects and the work of the day.” I said this ten times. I had already used this technique two days previously to heal an impending gout attack. (I also did physical things, like increasing my intake of water.)

This approach didn't really work, however. I felt at least that I had been wounded. I thought about how I in the past had allowed myself to become too close to my loved ones, so that I became overly sensitive. I thought about the lie in my head, picked up, I think by my mother, that if you are very good to someone, they won't hurt you. I thought about the fact that Stephen has two critical parents in his head. I asked Jesus Christ to come into my heart and help me be strong by myself. I remembered that Stephen has had a very difficult week, and that I had warned myself that he might not be in the best shape after this ordeal. I had found out that he had been brooding about some serious matters with his school.

I got to work and was able to go about my day productively, although beneath the surface I felt a nagging sadness. On the way home, I was overcome by emotion. I felt a knot in my heart and throat, and was seriously frightened that this might be serious enough to cause a heart attack. I remembered a section on forgiveness in my last book which applied to this situation:

“Religious ecstasy and forgiveness are one and the same phenomenon. Most of us most of the time are not forgiving, because knot forgiving. Knot forgiveness is a fearful adaptation to conflict of wills.

“We are the authors of our worlds, but not the sole authors. Every life story is jointly authored by the person, significant others, and God. When we would write our story differently than another, conflict arises. Conflict is a knot at the base of the heart. Going on with one's heart in knots is knot forgiving.

“These knots are decisions to this effect: 'We see the world differently, you and I. I am right and you are not right. I can no longer flow with you regarding this matter. Therefore, it is necessary for me to erect a barrier of mistrust and misgiving between the two of us and for my own good.

“Surely nearly everyone has had a true experience of forgiveness. the knotted heart breaks open, repentance rushes into the rended area, tears flow, the throat knots, then opens as words of repentance pour out. Misgiving becomes giving, mistrust becomes trust. Knot forgiveness becomes forgiveness. Release and relief are felt. A soul is healed. In the spiritual world, healing is the removal, not the creation of scars.

“Now it can be seen why religious ecstasy and forgiveness are equivalent. When we forgive the rest of the universe for being not us, for being unique, we start to trust it. !he biggest knot of the human heart, our ego, i.e. our will against God, unravels, and we are filled with the Holy Spirit. This is why every act of forgiveness and repentance brings us one step closer to salvation."

I longed to experience knot forgiveness for Stephen, but it was not forthcoming. I did call on the names of Jesus Christ and Paramahansa Yogananda many, many times, and I received comfort and guidance from them.

Stephen and I were to have dinner with our downstairs neighbor, Sue Troha, for the first time since we moved here two years ago. Actually, I was glad that this was in the works, as it would give structure to a difficult situation. Sue brought champagne, we had a nice dinner, and a good walk to TCBY for yogurt afterwards. Stephen and I turned in without discussing the matter.

It was in my dreams that the healing was to come. I must tell you now about my theory of dreams (throughout the night working out problems)

Out of the many dreams I must have had last night, my self saw fit to wake me with two still present in my mind. The first dream fragment of which I was aware must have occurred about 4 AM. In the dream I was sitting on one end of a couch, Stephen on the other. I was yelling, “You constantly discount me. You discount what I say, you discount what I do.” Stephen was protesting a bit, but in the dream I was winning. I was getting my point across, and he was listening. In fact, these discounted feelings are in there, and for healing to occur, they needed to surface and be expressed in some form.

The second dream is much more fascinating. It was on my mind just as I awakened at 7 AM. In this dream, Stephen and I were someplace where we could see a beach, maybe Florida. An old friend of mine who used to sing in a band with me, Ellen OBrien, was in a car with us. I haven't seen Ellen in years, and I have no idea why she was the bearer of the healing message. The windows were rolled up, and we were somewhat surprised to see that it was so cold outside that there was ice on the ocean, yet the sun was shining warmly. A bird flew in the vent window, which was open. It was a beautiful dove, but one that was rose colored with white patches. Ellen was saying that she was here last year, and had caught an eagle at that time. We talked about whether it had been this cold too. Then in the dream, I broke out into joyous peals of laughter. “This is the Dove of Peace!”I said over and over again.

I awoke with this laughter and these shouts still ringing in my ear. I said to Stephen, who was awake, “The Lord sent me the Dove of Peace in my dreams.” And I told him about the dream. It is now a couple of hours since then, and I write these important words down. I still recognize a mild sadness in my heart, but this, I know, will recede. I now have a concrete peace of comfort in my heart from God, and I know that I am loved by the Universe.

It is ok. It is like when you are very small and you have fallen off your bicycle and bruised your knee very badly. Now your mother has come and she is holding you close and saying, “"It's alright, Jimmie. You'll live. You'll heal, and soon you'll be out playing and having fun again.”

Ch 11: Do we share past lives?

AIDS is deeply affecting my life. The priest who gave the sermon on July 19, the day I wrote my letter to Rev. Chapman, is seriously ill with AIDS. He was kicked out of his parish after the bishop discovered his situation. He was able to find a home here at Trinity.

I phoned Bill Chapman a few days after he had received my letter. I had been bothered more and more by the estrangement between Byron and me. The first thing Rev. Chapman did was to tell me how much he appreciated reading my letter, and that he thought it was a beautiful thing to do. He said he had dropped me a card. I said that I would like to get together with him before he left on his vacation and discuss this matter.

That Friday I met with Rev. Chapman for about 45 minutes in the morning. Father Chapman is a very good listener, and he mostly allowed me to talk out my frustrations and my confused feelings about this situation. However, he was concerned about what could be done to make Byron more comfortable. Apparently he had gone over to visit Byron and found the condition of his apartment appalling. I had already found out from Tom Bolman that Father Chapman wanted to see the apartment made more like a home. He also wanted to know about the state of Byron's resources. I told that Stephen had called and arranged for a friend of ours who needs work to help Byron fix up the place more.

That Saturday night, Stephen and I went over to Sheila's house. We had previously agreed that I would undergo a past life regression later in the evening. As it turned out, the regression provided direct insight into the situation Byron and I found ourselves in. I present an accurate transcription of the significant section of this regression here.

[Ed. note: This whole area of past life regression through guided hypnosis has been thoroughly studied and critiqued. However, it’s just included here to further sketch a frame of mind that I entered at the time as a way of elaborating an aspect of the sketch of the person I was trying to become.]

Past Life Regression of Jim Andris by Sheila Dugan

Let's go through the tunnel again. I want you to walk through this beautiful, spacious tunnel. Keep walking. Keep looking. Know that you're going to the end of the tunnel where Egypt will unfold for you. Feel it.

I'm there.

Good. Now. I'd like you to describe the scene for me.

I'm aware of a red, orange color. And I can see carvings of kings and I feel that I know this is Phebes, not Thebes, but Phebes. Nile. And I see bustling activity. Tens of thousands of slaves and some merchants, some great work is being done.

What are they doing?

I think they're building something.

Can you tell me what they're building?

Well, I seem to be near the river that these slaves are moving back and forth from the river to cliffs. There's some blocks being carried .... Well, they're being moved.

How are they being moved?

I'm not sure.

Look around you.

Well, it's as if my mind is dulled, but I'm aware of some beings, but I can't quite see them. The stones seem to be moving over the surface of the earth along a path that's been pre-set.

Okay, let's clear the scene. I'm going to count from five to one, and on the count of one, I want you to know that you're awareness will be clear, your mind will be cleared of all blocks to see exactly how the stones are being moved and for what purpose. This is universal knowledge and accessible by you. Five, four, getting deeper and clearer, three, two, deeper, clearer, gem, center, one. What do you see?

I see much, and I'm frightened. I see creatures with a strange insect-like face. One creature (?) but his face is still not clear. I'm aware that it's as though these legs are around to the right, and one to my left. And my job is just to be there. I can't even tell what I'm doing .... I can't figure this out. I'm not clear.

Remember that you're always protected. I want you to look now.. look away from the creatures ...

Sigh …

. . . for a moment and look at how the blocks are being moved. Are they being moved by men? Are they being moved by levitation.

I know how they're being moved. They're not being moved by men, they're being guided by men. Their movement is governed by laws that we could discover. These laws allow these blocks to move along a time-space path that's been pre-set, but they do need guidance to keep from slipping off this path, and so men are walking beside them, making sure that they do not slip. They are essentially gliding ... gliding to the building that's being built on the face of the cliff.

What is the shape of the building that's being built on the face of the cliff?

It is a huge temple with columns that are maybe 120 feet or maybe longer. Now I can see the entrance. It's very dark inside this. It's a temple, and I can see fires that are in some kind of large urns for light. It's relatively cold in here, and dark.

Okay. You've done very well. I'm going to count from five to one, and on the count of one, you will find your physical self at a deeper level.

Sigh.

And your consciousness aware, and your visualization keen. Try to look for what it is you do. Five, four, getting deeper, and protected, three, deeper, and protected, two, gem, center, one.

I have a sense of my clothes, and I'm wearing sandals made of reed. They slip on. I'm wearing a costume that has ... the material is somewhat rough to my skin, and there's a two-piece sort of thing on my shoulders, which are very broad, are .. I can see that the clothes are made to accentuate my broad shoulders, and they are made of striped material, possibly even having gold woven into them, or at least something shimmering. And my legs and almost to my knees are bare. There's a skirt there, not a skirt, in those days, just a garment, held tight at my waist. And I seem to be wearing a headdress. This headdress flows down around my shoulders.

And I'm very excited about being here. I'm very glad to be here, because this place is the center of knowledge, and there is a transfer of intelligence being accomplished, not in the open, but in this building, from one part of the universe to another, and I am a very small part of this transfer, because my energy is aligned with the forces that are accomplishing this transfer. And the feeling in this dark room is extremely intense, because what is being transferred is not matter as we know it in the 20th Century, but rather some kind of vibratory energy that carries with it knowledge of our connectedness to God. And so much of the activity that goes on in this place at a physical level is not a very good indication of the transfer that is occurring. On the exterior it appears as though a huge temple is being constructed, but that is not the primary purpose of this activity. The primary purpose of this activity is the transfer of knowledge from another race of beings to humanity.

Ashtar ??? Ashtar. Ashtar.? It's a word that I have not said in this life. But it's a name.

Is Ashtar your name?

No. Ashtar is the name of a prince or pharaoh or magician who directs the human side of this contact.

Does that mean that Ashtar is the chosen one from these other beings to the .. is Ashtar human?

Well, not entirely. The myths that the 20th Century scientists jokingly refer that the pharaohs regarded themselves as half divine are actually true. Because in those days divinity had a way of infusing the human spirit, taking it beyond. (?) Ashtar was a human body infused with divine spirit.

Was Ashtar a good divine spirit?

I believe he was. In the limits of those days, for good at those times was not understood in the context of human rights for all. But if we think of humanity as a whole, as an entity, Ashtar was good.

What is your name?

Mach-heech. Mach-hee-ul.

Mach-heal-mach?

Mach-heal. Mach-heal.

Mach-heal is your name?
Mach-heal. Mach-heal. Mach-heal?! (Gasp. Sigh.)

You are protected, and you are safe.

I am glad that I am Mach-heal. I loved myself.

What is your job, Mach-heal?

The words lover, or consort, come to my mind

And who were you lover or consort to?

He.. Heah. Heah.

Heah. Who was Heah?

He is at another level of this transformation. He is not divine nor does he appear to understand the divinity of Ashtar. Heah is a priest and his job is to convey proper respect and information to Ashtar, which he loves.

Mach-heal, I want to know if you know who Heah is in your lifetime as Jim Andris in the 20th Century. Search.

I cannot say this for certain, ? but I believe that he may be Byron Davidson.

The one who you call Byron Davidson, do you see him as another working with you in this transformation, or do you see him as the one you call Heah.

Byron is the dark side, and this is the way it works. He is a manifestation that is necessary, for in those days the principle of dark and light was operative and human (?) both sides were necessary. This fascination with the dark side showed itself in the person Heah and in the person Byron.

I'm going to count from five to one and when I get to one you will find yourself in a deep and peaceful state, and I am going to at that time change the tape. I just want you to rest and see yourself amid the activity. Five. Four. Going deeper and more peaceful. Three. Deeper and deeper. Seeing all the activity around you and feeling it. Two. Gem. Center. One.

I want to continue. Going to count from three two one, and when I get to one, you will find it very easy to tell me about the nature of your relationship with Heah. Three. Two. Gem. Center. One.

There was a deep love and respect between Heah and Mach-heal. It was the equivalent of a favorite .. I was a favorite, I was a favorite of his, the most, even though we did not maintain a long-term sexual relationship. He loved my simple purity, and I loved his masculine power, his potency. It was overwhelming and I ... that either of us . .. It seems that we had at that time knowledge that we were connected in yet other lifetimes ... as this principle ... as kind ... as relationship ... it was good, And yet he did confuse me.

How did he confuse you?

I could not understand his dark side.

Would you please describe his dark side.

(Sigh.) It is not a thing that I (?) about. He was special to me, but he had killed people. And I knew that if I did not show the proper respect, he would do the same to me.

Were there sexual rituals used at this time? If so, how were they used or misused, and what was the purpose of these sexual rituals?

These were not sexual rituals, these were orgies, and they were conducted under the tolerant eye of Ashtar. Tolerant, not approving.

Did these orgies include both men and women, or just men, or just women?

There were orgies for both sexes, but I was mainly connected with orgies with men.

Did you like these orgies?

I always felt they were too intense.

Were you made to do things that you felt uncomfortable doing?

Sex and domination were rather inseparable in those days, and I did not like to be dominated, so that I became (?)

Were you ever brutalized?

Yes. But not particularly beaten for the sake of being beaten, but there was very little distinction between sex and dominance in those times, at least with Heah.

How does this knowing help you to understand its effects in the lifetime that you live as James Andris, does it affect the life of James Andris?

I have seen some things I have not seen before about my soul. My soul is pure and my soul loves its separate connectedness. Some souls desire a union with other souls to a point where their identities are blended, but my soul loves to relate to other souls while keeping its distinctness and uniqueness. My soul loves to stand and see the events of a lifetime, and all the lifetimes of this soul that I am aware of (?) but in all of these lifetimes (?) it's hard to say in that Egyptian lifetime that special soul was Heah. (?) I'm not sure if there is a special soul in this lifetime in just that way.

Did you know one named Stephen Nichols in that lifetime as Mach-heal? Search.

I don't believe that we were close in that lifetime.

Did you know one named Paul Beyerl.

Paul Beyer!. Paul Beyer!. I hated Paul Beyer! in that lifetime. I didn't hate him, but

Who is Paul Beyer! in that lifetime?

He was at my level of social status.

What did he do to make you hate him so much?

Well, I didn't hate him. I think he was another favorite of Heah's, but he played to Heah's dark side. I think they did disgusting things.

Did they do disgusting things to you?

That was one of the reasons that the sexual relationship between Heah and I did not last.

Because there were urine and feces involved.

When you left Heah, did you suffer? Did he send you away?

No, I just went on with my life, and we occasionally had sex. (?)

Is there a particularly painful event that has caused blocks in health or sexual identity from this lifetime that you would like to share with me?

I do not wish to share with you, but I have it in mind.

Okay, then, I want to offer you the post-hypnotic suggestion that you may go deeply on your own into an altered state of consciousness and access this awareness with the full memory of it that you have right now and change the event to move the block.

I do wish to work with this right now, even though I do not wish to relate the full event.

That's fine. You can go back and talk to Heah, talk to the one who was Paul Beyerl.

I want to say these things. The human person was made to stand in dignity. It is mistaken to use human excrement as a basis for sexual gratification. This is a mark of the dark side, for it seeks to bring the vibrations of the higher chakras down to a lower level .. (?) It accounts for my gout in this lifetime, because part of me was attracted to this, and still is. My higher self knows that I must master this and that I need to experience this and to move beyond

How are you feeling? I feel free .. [End of past life reading]

The next Sunday Rev. Chapman's sermon was based on the parable of the man who bought a field with a hidden treasure. And he asked us to accept each other in this church in that spirit. People say there is an atmosphere of love here. He asked us to accept each other sight unseen. I called Byron immediately after church. It wasn't easy to do, and yet I knew I must deal with the situation.

“Hello,” Byron answered weakly.

“Hi, Byron, it's Jim.”

“Oh, hi, Jim.”

“How are you doing?”

“Fairly well.”

“Byron, do you remember our meeting in the National parking lot a couple of weeks back?”

“No.”

“I didn't think you would.”

“The aberration only lasted a couple of days.”

“You mean the drinking.”

“Yes. I got some more bad news and it shook me up.“

"What news was that.

“Well, I've developed Kaposi's lesions on my face and several on my trunk. They're getting worse.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. What does Packman say?”

“When I went in to see him, I wasn't sure that these lesions on my face were Kaposi's. At first I thought they might be razor bum. But he took one look at them and said, ‘This is it.’”

“I'm going to have to have chemotherapy. I'm going in on August 25. It's very debilitating to the immune system, so we've put it off just as long as possible.“

“I'm sorry to hear that, Byron. How do you feel about it. “

“Oh, about as well as could be expected.”

I told Byron about how shocked I was when I saw him in the parking lot, and how I had had to back off for a few days to get my thoughts together. I said that I had written a long letter and talked to Chapman about it. I went over the letter briefly with him, outlining what we had been through together. “You know, Byron, it really helped me to get things in perspective. I saw that a relationship isn't just a confrontation over a shopping basket. A relationship is many years of sharing the good and the bad. And a person isn't his behavior, but rather a very complex set of potentials that get more or less realized. And I knew that I would have to see you again. I saw that your actions were actually very comprehensible.

“But there is one thing you should know. I don't intend to lecture you about it, and it's not a threat. It's just a fact. You won't see me if you are drinking. I'm not angry with you.“

We talked for a while longer. Did he have food in the house? Yes. Was his AIDS buddy coming around? Not much, I found out. Had he called EFA (Effort for Aids) for a new support person? No, but he knew that he should. Was EFA paying his expenses. Yes, his food and his rent. I told him we were sending Ed over to help him make his place more like a home. And I told him that I would keep in touch and see him shortly. He told me that he only has the energy to be up for a short time and that he was able to watch movies from Plaza Video next door.

“Are you ready?“ I asked.

“Ready for what?“

“For your demise?“

“Yes, I ask God every day to help me through this.“

“Byron, I need to say one more thing. It takes courage to live in this world under the best of circumstances. And it takes even more courage to die. But you deserve to spend your last days, or weeks, or months on this earth in dignity. I think you would be able live this time with dignity a lot easier if you didn't drink.“

“I’m trying,“ he replied.

“I don't suppose you're able to go to your AA groups now.“

“No, and there are several reasons for that. I don't have the energy to get out. I'm not supposed to go out in the heat and humidity. It's not good for me to be exposed to people right now, because I'm susceptible to infection. And besides, it's very hard even to face people with these lesions on my face. I went to church this morning, but I'm even uncomfortable about that.“

“I know how difficult it must be. Well, I must be going now. I won't see you today, but I'll keep in touch, and I'll be seeing you shortly. God bless you.“

“God bless you.“

Stephen had on his own initiative arranged for Ed Hrebec to donate a third of the cost of fixing Byron's place up. We would donate the other two-thirds. This is typical of Stephen. He had said hardly anything about this situation, but he was showing his concern by taking some practical, helpful action.

Tuesday morning Ed showed up about 9:00 AM. We tried to call Byron, but his line was busy. I was quite annoyed about this. I ranted some more that this was typical, that Byron had behaved this way long before he had AIDS, and that we were simply going over there and knocking on his door.

“You're being kind of hard on him, aren't you, Jim?“

“Look Ed, I know this man. This is just the way he is.“

We got to Byron's place, which is right down the street a block and a half. I ran in to ring the doorbell while Ed waited in the car. I could tell by the tone of Byron's voice that he was grateful that we were there. I motion for Ed to park the car, and Byron buzzed me in. Byron lives on the second floor, and he had left the door slightly ajar. I entered and saw him sitting on the couch. The Kaposi's lesion on his arm was now the size of a quarter. Two weeks earlier it had been a mere purple bump. There were some smaller blotches on his neck and lips. There he sat on the couch, all humped over. He looked so pathetic, so helpless and so frightened, that immediately all the irritation left me. My heart clutched and went out to him. He sounded like a very small boy all by himself in a very dark room.

I put my arm on his shoulder. “Now, Byron. I can see that you're frightened. We're going to help you get this place into more livable shape.“

“Thank you,“ he said, ever so weakly.

I called him that night. Ed had gotten all the blankets down from the windows, and had put up drapes and curtains. Byron sounded really pleased and relieved. “It looks like a home, now,“ he said.

I knew somehow that Byron's days were probably few in number. The universe is so amazing. David Schlitt, Byron's closest friend for twenty years called me right while I was talking to him. I called David back and filled him in on the situation. I think he will probably visit Byron before too long.

“He might not last 'til Christmas, David, the way he is going down hill.“

Ch. 12: The Harmonic Convergence/Letter to Ruth Hanna

The Harmonic Convergence

[Ed. note: This chapter was started and never finished, but it has real importance to the flow of the story. Fortunately, the letter I wrote to Ruth Hanna a month later brings the matter to conclusion. Ruth Hanna was a quite important New Age personality of the time in St. Louis, who among many other activities, was offering leadership and teaching of the Course in Miracles.]

Soon, I'm going to have to settle down and continue telling the story of my spiritual birth. However, the events of the past weekend mark an essential turning point in my life and in the life of the world to come. I can't imagine a more important weekend to document.

My parents were married on August 16, 1937. This weekend marked the celebration of their 50th wedding aniversary. My sister and brother, Vicki and Tom (and, mainly, Tom's wife Dee), and I had been planning this event for several months. Vicki and Dee did most of the work, since they are in the home town with mom and dad, 550 miles away from me.

We had a great deal of trouble convincing our parents that they should have this celebration in the first place. They didn't want a cruise, because of mom's vertigo, and they said they had everything they needed at home. Finally dad announced to Vicki, "We want an electric barbecue grill. That's what we want, so get it for us!"

Dad also wanted to have the celebration at his small motor home site 40 miles north of Marietta, nestled in the hills behind Senecaville Lake. But Vicki put her foot down, and rightly so. There would be no way that 75 people could be accommodated in such a remote place. So the final compromise was to have it in Bill Greathouse's back yard next door. Part of the deal was that Bill could play non-stop country and western music that afternoon.

There was one minor altercation leading up to this anniversary. Dee wanted to have a family portrait made. I raised the question about how Stephen would fit into such plans. I got, “Well, that's up to you, Jim,” from Dee. I also got negative advice from Sheila on the subject, negative in the sense that she didn't think Stephen's being in the portrait would be appropriate.

In former times, I would have made an absolute issue out of this. I would have been furious, and would have sought to “argue them out of their unreasonable rejection of my lifestyle.” But once again, Merrill Harmin's provocative question, "Are you doing it from love, or from some other motive?" floated in my consciousness. I eventually decided to trust God and to remember that, after all, this was mom and dad's day.

A phone conversation with Dee the week before the anniversary revealed that the issue had been resolved, and a new one had arisen. Apparently, Tom had been less than cooperative, and plans for the family portrait had fallen through. I let Dee know that I had intended to pursue a peaceful resolution of this matter, and she said that she did appreciate my thoughtfulness. She also mentioned that Myra and Walter would be there. You may recall that Myra was my old high school girl friend who married the politically conservative Californian and recently sent me anti-gay literature through the mail.

Myra had mentioned to Dee that she thought I was no longer her friend. She told Dee about the anti-gay tapes and information, and that she hadn't heard from me since Christmas. As a result of this phone conversation with Dee, I sent Myra a beautiful card. In it, I told her that my anger had been brief, but then I had realized that this action on her part should have been no surprise. I told her that I held out no hope of changing her mind, and I certainly was at peace with myself and with God about my sexual orientation. I invited her to focus on the positive aspects of our relationship, and to be assured that she could enjoy the wedding anniversary celebration.

It bothered me that I couldn't be more helpful with this celebration, and I resolved to do something “really neat” for my parents. As it turned out, I had written an interactive videotape project which had been funded last year. As I was learning to use the video camera, it occurred to me that a great gift would be to videotape the entire proceedings and provide copies to whomever wanted one.

Thursday night, Stephen and I packed up and headed for Marietta. It was good to be away from the pressure of work. In fact, forty five minutes out of St. Louis, Stephen became human again. He tends to be a bit of a workaholic.

I had been somewhat disappointed about the fact that attending my parent's wedding anniversary was going to cause me to miss the big celebration of the Harmonic Convergence to be held at Monk's Mound at Cahokia State Park, not far from St. Louis.

I have read so many inspiring descriptions of the nature of the Harmonic Convergence, that I almost despair of attempting to characterize it. As I understand it, this is an important evolutionary node for our planet. Part of the emerging New Age metaphysics is the realization that we are all connected by vibratory energy. There are more subtle, divine energies at work in the world, guiding each of us and the world collectively towards fulfillment.

At least three American Indian traditions, the Mayan, Aztec, and Hopi, have cited the dates of August 16 and 17, 1987 as extremely signifIcant ones for the evolution of higher consciousness in the human race. New Age leaders, picking up on these ancient traditions, have elaborated and discoursed upon this time period. Most notable of these is Jose Arguelles, who argues that during this period humanity moves from a period of acceleration to synchronization, from fear to love.

…

Letter to Ruth Hanna

September 12, 1987

Dear Ruth:

This morning I find myself thinking a lot of thoughts about you. Events have been pointing to this communication. And so we go with the flow …

Did I actually ever say to you how much I appreciate your tireless efforts to bring peace and enlightenment to the world? How much I appreciate your newsletter and all the events you have organized over the years? My heart goes out to you in thankfulness that I have been able to share this time-space with you.

I must tell you the story of how Stephen and I celebrated the Harmonic Convergence. As the Universe would have it, my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary was held in Marietta, Ohio, a county seat in southeastern Ohio on the river where I grew up. They were married on August 16, 1937. My brother, sister and I had been planning this event for six months.

Several times, and once, even on my microcomputer screen, God placed this coming event forcefully before me. One of the ways this came to me was through your newsletter. God told me in the no uncertain terms I have learned to recognize that I was to participate in the Harmonic Convergence. But how to do it when in a small town in Ohio was the question.

I decided to trust my intuition. As Stephen and I came nearer to Marietta, I remembered that the town was dotted with prehistorical burial mounds, and I became convinced that we should celebrate the morning of August 16 at the top of one of these mounds. On Friday, we did some dowsing for good vibrations, which is an interesting story in itself, but too long for this letter.

As it turned out, a retired United Church of Christ minister from Sarahsville named Rev. Sam Rienke had organized a celebration. My sister-in-law informed me that it would be held atop the very mound which my intuition had told me was the holiest place in the city. We arrived at Conus, which is in the “Mound Cemetery.” Before dawn on the 16th. I had brought my my videocamera in the car, and while I do not have actual tapes of the ceremony, I did videotape the mound, a message from Sam, and our impressions of the event after it was over. A week later, my mother sent me a picture that was published in the Marietta Times. Stephen is clearly visible in the picture.

There was just enough room atop the symmetrical, 60 foot mound for the 25 people that were assembled there. Rev. Sam Rienke passed out programs, and I thought it was going to be a small town misconception of what the New Age is about. I was wrong. We sang and chanted, joined hands and sang the Lord’s Prayer. Then Sam said, “Now let’s go into our own space and in our own, individual ways let’s attune to this new energy that is coming.” Standing on top of a mound in the midst of a grove of trees with a breeze on my face and the sun rising, it wasn’t difficult to do.

Next there was a time for sharing, filled with many wonderful comments and tales. But I must share this with you. Sam started the sharing with this tale:

“A miracle happened to me just now. I found lying on my program this morning this beautiful, perfect white feather. [He held it up for us to see.]

“A few years ago I was attempting to paint a white feather as a symbol of the perfect peace and freedom one feels when he is One with God. The harder I worked on the painting, the less satisfactory was the result. In a moment of frustration, I turned away from the canvas. When I looked again, I saw a small, perfect white feather stuck to the still wet oils. It was as if God were saying, “You know, you don’t have to strive so hard to produce this feather. Here is a perfect feather for you.

“That was magical enough, but in fact, this feather got here in a miraculous way. The woman setting next to me this morning (Cher Horning) is from Portland, Oregon. She sat out from there several days ago (with her husband, Jim Workman) knowing that she would celebrate the Harmonic Convergence somewhere in the east. In Indiana , she found this feather and put it in her purse. This morning, on impulse, she placed it on my program.”

Next, I sang “Beautiful Planet” a capella. Another woman talked about her happiness at living in the “time of trial,” for illness, even of the Earth, is always a sign of healing, and a point of great receptivity to change. And so the sharing went, one after another.

I’ve heard about the wonderful event here on Monk’s Mound at Cahokia. One of my friends described the rising sun and the seven geese that flew across it. But God arranged the perfect celebration for Stephen and me, 550 miles away. Small is definitely not less! And I wanted to share it with you, Ruth!￼

Ch. 13: Death

Since we spend essentially all of our time in a state of transitioning to death, this chapter contains the most significant subject matter in the book. I mean it. From the perspective that we are born, we live and then we die, the seventy-odd years that most people have on this planet is but an infinitesimal chip between our mother's womb and our grave. What I'll be doing in this chapter is exploring the nature of our “existence” before and after our current earth life.

Byron died on Wednesday, August 9, 1989. I'm not particularly proud or ashamed of the way our relationship ended. It has been almost two years since I have written about the two of us. Byron was fortunate in that he developed a close circle of friends who cared for him in his infirmity. Bob Goss and Frank Ring, Sally Kaplan, Janet Rendquist, Larry and Lois Horak and others gave generously of their time and hearts. Not only this, but these people will tell you that Byron enriched their lives immeasurably during the time they cared for him. I remained in contact with Byron, seeing or talking to him every week or so. He continued to drink.

On the Thursday before his death, I had called Byron from work and got Bob Gauss. “Byron's on the floor, and we can't get him up. He's obviously been here all day.”

“Go ahead. I'll call you later,” I replied.

Later that night, Bob told me that he had been admitted to Barnes Hospital. “Byron says he's dying, and Packman, his physician, says he's coming apart medically. He wants people to visit him.” I called several times in the next two days, but I was to learn that Byron was in no position to answer the phone.

I finally decided to go visit him on Sunday afternoon. When I entered the hospital room I was shocked to see his condition. One eye was caked shut. His other eye, I learned, hardly focused. His breathing was labored. His mouth hung open, and the inside of it looked like raw meat. His Kaposi lesions were uncountable.

I stood by the side of his bed.

“Water, water.” He choked.

I gave him water through a straw. Immediately he started to choke and spit up blood. I was frankly frightened. He had told me two weeks before that he had projectile vomited into the doctor's face. In a few minutes he settled down again and asked for more water. I gave it to him cautiously.

“Who are you?“ he mumbled.

“What?“

“Who are you?“

“It's Jim Andris.“

He processed this information slowly, then nodded. I made conversation with him, about his room being nice and the weather outside. But he wasn't responding. The room was nice. From it I could see Forest Park, the Chase Park Plaza Hotel, and the high rise that Byron had lived in for many years which afforded such a wonderful view of the city.

Byron's words were scarcely understandable. “Why are you afraid of me?”

“What, Byron?“

“Why are you afraid of me?“

“I'm not afraid of you, I'm afraid of your disease. You look bad.“ I immediately regretted that I had said the last sentence. Besides, a part of me knew that this wasn't entirely true. I didn't really trust Byron. He was quiet for a few minutes. I was finding this extremely difficult. Strange thoughts ran through my mind. I thought that this was too much, too undignified a death for anyone. I thought that I would have to find a way to die that would not put such demands on other people. I simply couldn't bear the thought of watching Byron go through this horrible death. And, I thought of the disquieting possibility that Byron had chosen his death. Suddenly, I found myself saying, “Bryon, I don't know what is right here, but I'm going to say goodby.“

Byron was jolted, but he nodded.

“I suppose you know that I've loved you in my own way, in fact, I still do. I pray for your peace and for the rest of your soul. And I hope I see you again.“ I then left. I didn't even wait for him to say something.

That was to be the last time that I saw Byron.

He died on Wednesday morning.

I was asked to write his obituary and to call old friends. I spent a day at work dealing with this.

Byron's funeral was Saturday morning at 10:00 at Trinity Episcopal. I was a pall bearer. Just before 10:00 I broke into tears. Woody Bebout comforted me. My tears were not only for Byron. They were tears for all the deaths from AIDS that I had experienced, tears I had not been able to shed until then. There was David Suddeth in 1982, Al Wolfington in 1983, Don Busch and Jonathon, my first lover, in 1988, and several others that I had known less intimately. My tears were also for the people still living with AIDS, including several close friends.

After the funeral, Stephen and I, the Horaks, and Dave Schlitt drove the fifty miles to the country grave site. On the way Dave told me that Bryon had said very clearly to his brother that my staying my distance had bothered him. I maintained my cool and thanked Dave for telling me. I said, simply, “Well, Byron has walked out of my life many times, and this time I walked out of his. I did what I had to do.“ I have to live with that fact.

Ed Hrebec, I later found out, handled the situation much differently. He brought some beautiful flowers close for Byron to see. He felt intimate and close with Byron, and gave him an hour-long energy balancing.

Woody Bebout was there another time to comfort him and to have Byron sit straight up in bed and agonize, “Make it stop, Woody, please! Make it stop!“

Byron's brother had the obituary withdrawn from the St. Louis Post Dispatch. It was printed on the funeral bulletin. I've included it here.

“Byron Davidson was born on June 26, 1940 near Jerseyville, Illinois and grew up on a farm there. His parents were Helen Witt Davidson and Russell E. Davidson. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri in his teens, was a resident of Alton and Edwardsville in the '60s and '70s, and then returned to St. Louis.

“He received a B.A. in 1964 and an M.A. in 1967 from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. In 1968 he began a long career as an instructor at Belleville Area College, where he taught English composition and literature, philosophy and media. He maintained an avid interested in the avante garde of philosophy and literature. He continued in that position until 1986.

“Byron was received by Trinity Episcopal in 1988. He was married in 1965 for
eight years to Edith Young Davidson, of San Leandro, CA. Byron gave countless hours of service to the St. Louis gay community. He was involved with the Gay Academic Union, the Gay Hotline, a radio show on KADI called "Gay Talk," and Pride Week activities.
Even in his illness he continued his service activities. He worked with Effort For AIDS on the AIDS hotline, with Food Outreach and with the People With Aids support group.

“He is survived by a brother, William Davidson, a sister-in-law, Catherine, and two nephews, James and John. He is also survived by many loving friends. Donations in his name may be made to Food Outreach, 4579 Laclede Ave., Suite 303, St. Louis, MO, to the Botanical Gardens or to the St. Louis Symphony.“

I also wrote this romanticized song version of our friendship. Bob Goss' sermon on Byron's life did a much better job of painting a loving portrait of the man.

Byron, when first I met you,
it was a certain warm and mellow day in June.
I'll not forget our doorway meeting,
you and Jerry filled with laughter, in that magic dark room.
And as we stood there engulfed by music,
I had a sense of just how special you would soon become to me.
You'd be my teacher, my companion and my friend for all eternity.

We shared life's drama, its smiles and sadness,
and there were always times when we would drift apart.
And yet our paths would come together,
and I would find that you had never left a corner of my heart.
And memories flood me, you in spring flowers,
out on a country road, or pouring o'er some faded ancient tome,
While candles flicker in the windows of you overlooking-city home.

We never dreamed that we would come to such an end.
We'd face such boulders in the road.
It never seemed to us the Universe would send
Us such a monumental load.
We faced the future, and it cut us like a knife.
Is it harder to be dead, or harder still to hold to life
When all around you friends are gone.

So Byron, though you can't hear me,
I feel you near me in this very special way.
We were like brothers, we learned together,
as we developed what it means for two men to be young and gay.
So as I stand here engulfed by music,
I have a sense of just how special you will always be to me.
You'll be my teacher, my companion and my friend for all eternity.

So what is this thing called death? And what could I possibly say in answer to this question that has not been said, especially since I walked out on Byron's death.

I had been conditioned by this materialistic, power-mad society we live in to not think precisely about the significance of death. Dealing with people with AIDS has forced me to do this. While I still know very little about death, I do now know how to live with dying people. It's just like living with people has been all along. Another gift to me from Byron and the others who preceded me is that I now think I'm strong enough to die.

In the course of my New Age studies, I have often read what other people have had to say about death. It would be easy to ramble on about reincarnation, or Jesus Christ's love, or find comforting Biblical passages. It would be so tempting to repeat hackneyed phrases, or take some favorite author's carefully worked-out death theology and quote it here. But none of this will do, and for the following reasons.

For one thing, I haven't lied in this book yet. Everything I've told you, I'm satisfied is true. And the truth is, I've got only a doubting Thomas perspective when it comes to insights about these matters.

For another, while I am a believer in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, I think that the Bible or any holy scripture presents us with a limited and incomplete view of God. Not only that, but what is in the Bible has been subject to confusing elaboration and interpretation. I'm not saying that the Bible is false. I simply believe that Jesus Christ has continued to speak to us in other ways, for example, in The Course in Miracles and will continue to do so. The truth about God is apparently so much more than our limited human consciousness can process.

And finally, I refuse to irresponsibly weave the bits and pieces that I have gathered about death into a gaudy basket that won't bear fruit without breaking. So instead, I am going to start by giving you what it is that I do know. From this, I hope to build just as much of a structure that might have a chance to support the weight of careful examination.

My mother tells a touching story. When she was seven, she was very ill, probably with hepatitis. The doctor had told grandmother that she wouldn't survive the night. As the little child lay there, there appeared to her a dazzling point of light. From this point there emerged a beautiful angel in white, shining raiment. The angel extended his hand to my mother. But she said “No, no! I don't want to die. Please let me stay and take care of my grandma.” The angel then put his hand up in a gesture of peace, and receded. In the morning, her fever had broken.

If you cast away your fear and denial, and ask around, you will find more stories like this one than you can process. The study of near-death experiences is now achieving scientific respectability in small circles. These hundreds of thousands of stories share many common features. There is the image of white light. Many times, the person is outside his own body, perhaps above it, but connected by a thin “silver cord.”There is a sense of eternal peace. There is the desire to go forward into the light.

Then there is the fact that our minds seem to be connected. One more story will have to do. Many years ago, I awoke one Thursday morning in a terrible state of depression. As I managed to get up and move about, I began to sort things out. I had no reason to be depressed. The idea dawned on me that, as had happened so many times before, someone else that I loved was in great difficulty, and I was receiving a call for help. Throughout the day, it became more and more clear to me that it was my sister, Vicki, who was in trouble. That evening, certain that Vicki needed me, I called her.

“Hi, Vicki. How're you doing?“

“OK, Jim.“ Came the weak voice on the other end of the line.

“Cut the crap, sis, and level with me.“

Vicki then proceeded to tell me that her marriage was seemingly on the rocks. In response to her husband's unfaithfulness, she had fallen in love with someone else, and was getting no compassion from mom and dad. On top of that she had a serious kidney infection. I told her to get out here immediately. We spent three days together while she got things sorted out. It is this connectedness that I experience with everyone that I care about deeply that convinces me most that we share a part of each other's mind.

However, I am convinced that there is more than just sharing feelings and thoughts. I have experienced the phenomenon of dowsing. I am convinced that there is a form of psychic perception which allows us to sense objects and people which are remote from us or hidden from normal vision. Back in the '70s, when I was exploring so many ESP phenomena, I read a book by Francis Hitching called Dowsing. On many, many occasions, I was able to put my hands on a book I needed by just following my internal compass. In fact, the discovery of that is perhaps the most interesting example of dowsing that I can muster.

I was taking a trip across the northern USA in 1979. As I passed through Minneapolis, Minnesota, beautiful city and state, I felt compelled to explore. I found myself in an area of town called Dinkey town, which is right near the university. There was an enormous used book store there, of which I have forgotten the name. I walked into the store with my left hand extended, sensing something, I knew not what. I went around comers and piles of dusty books, up a short flight of stairs, and right to a bookcase, some of whose titles I recognized. Then I closed my eyes, extended my hand, and practically yanked a small paperback off the shelf. There it was, Hitching's book.

What is going on in a case like this? You can call me a liar, but I'm not. You can say that I've deluded myself, but what right have you to do that? I'm a perfectly sane, intelligent human being. You can say it was a lucky accident. You can say that I was guided by spirits who watch over me. You can say it was my Higher Self.

You want to know what I think? I just think simply that we have psychic perception.
It's just an ability that evolution has endowed us with. Animals know when a storm or an earthquake is coming. Police and the FBI readily use professional psychics' abilities to solve cases. How does it work? I don't know. I'd like to know, but if I don't find out, it won't kill me. And the fact that I don't know how it works doesn't tempt me to deny that it exists.

But what has all this to do with death? Well, many people have thought that the fact that our minds are connected and that we have psychic perception shows that there is a domain of the spiritual. In addition to our physical dimension, in which we come from our
mother's womb and enter the grave, there is a spiritual dimension. From this spiritual dimension comes our "Higher Purpose" in living this life, and from it comes help and guidance. At our death, back into the spiritual dimension does our essence go.

It seems clear to me that I am here to learn lessons. I am here to create and perfect myself. The impetus to do this comes not from the confines of my carnal existence, but from beyond those limits. There is an organizing principle to my life experiences, there are paths to follow, and there are difficult choices to make.

Here is one example from thousands. I was a lazy teenager. I thought of myself as a good kid, but more than that, my security blanket was my high intelligence and my talent. I allowed my mother to do all the housework for us kids. I allowed my father to make the money, and while I worked in his store, I did the least possible work. My father tolerated this behavior and my mother seemed most of the time not to be bothered by it in the least.

One of the things I hated about the time period in which I grew up was the expectation that a man would get married and raise a family. I thought it was very unfair that the man should have this expectation. I hated the fact that boys were supposed to hold doors for girls. Besides my homosexuality, this feeling of unbalance was one of the reasons that I was never attracted to a family life. I didn't want to have to pay for my children's education. I didn't want to support a wife.

I successfully avoided a family situation nearly all of my life. For years I complained about being lonely, but I never wanted the real responsibility that a family brings enough to “marry” anyone for very long. So now Stephen has come along and lived with me for five years. Two years ago his then 15 year old daughter asked if she could live with us. She has turned out to be exactly the same kind of teenager that I was. Not only that, but for the past several months, Stephen has been essentially without an income. I am paying all the household bills, and also for Stephanie's college and our vacation. I now find myself in the position that my father was so many years ago.

Every time I am tempted to resent Stephanie's unhelpfulness, I am smacked in the face by my own adolescence. I am forced to appreciate my parents. I am forced to be more loving to her than I am inclined to be. I am also reminded at the same time that in some ways my parents were irresponsible in not giving me better discipline in this regard.

I think you can get a feel for the lesson that is being learned here. It must be learned thousands of times a day in homes everywhere. I needed this lesson. I needed the challenge it presents and the growth it promotes.

Now here is the main point. If I didn’t believe in a spiritual dimension I would be at my wit's end. But because I look into my heart, because I call on the name of Jesus Christ, because I believe that what I do affects everything everywhere, I am able to grow in this situation. In cooperation with the universe, it was time that I shed the shell of adolescence. It was time that I matured. The concept of The Christ has come to my consciousness and unifies my experience.

Actually, this is heavy shit, and I still haven't found a way to adequately express what I believe. I really don't know what “life after death” is like. Will I go to an astral plane and have a form less definite, where the colors are more pastel? Will I wander aimlessly and encounter various spiritually sick creatures who will make my existence miserable? Will I “go back to God,” somehow being one with the Universe? I spare myself a lot of defensive posturing by giving up on trying to have certain knowledge of what it will be like. I am curious as hell, but I really don't know what's going to happen to me when I die.

But I do know that something very fascinating is going on, way beyond what I even currently appreciate. We must now discuss the subject of past life memories. To begin with, half of the people in the world take it as a given that a soul has many lifetimes. The mark of spiritual advancement is to honor the truth in all paths, even if you yourself may be on a different one. Moreover, anyone who has read the literature on reincarnation with an open mind has encountered many documented cases of children, e.g. in India, whose memory extends to a dead person's life. They have been taken to a strange village and been able to identify places and people and “their” relationship to these people.

Besides, I have had several experiences in which my own memory has extended to other lifetimes. Notice that I did not say, “I have had other lifetimes.” In the late '70s I began experimenting with self-hypnosis. (I will later fill in the fascinating details of this time period.) While in a self-induced hypnotic trance, I engaged in automatic typing, since I never have much liked hand writing. Fortunately, I kept these old attempts. Over a period of months, I began to develop a sense of contact with what some have called "the Akashic Record”—a “library” of all events in the universe, accessible by going to a certain level of consciousness. Here is a transcript of my very first successful contact.

dk kj r tin git thl dip siton diut wtind dofn doni dijel idj sp ichlxi difnodung winogi dothing did the diatance so upset the persons that they couldn’t help what they did.'

We are one. We give this information freely. This information is for the good of all. This entity is told to do the following. Go to the bedroom. In the bedroom there is a small book [of abstract symbols]. Tum to page 33.

How will I know what abstract symbol to choose?

You will know by morning. You will dream of the abstract symbol you are to contemplate.

For what purpose will I contemplate this symbol?

For future few tell foretell. Your future.

Why are we?

For the good of all concerned. This is all. This is the end of the communication.

Frankly, I don't even remember what the symbol was. What was more amazing to me was that there was this kind of correspondence going on between my fingers and some other dimension. Some of you may be thinking that this was just made up by me. Of course, it did come from a part of me. But in this form of automatic typing, the person simply allows the fingers to move on their own. It takes a bit of concentration and practice. As a matter of fact, I had filled up several pages of paper with garbage before the communication finally became intelligible.
It occurs to me that I was partially inspired in all of this by Jean Walters, a talented channeler of both health and past life readings in St. Louis, who was trained by Jerry Rothermel. But I developed my own unique applications. I cultivated the ability to type questions while in a trance and then allow the information to come through. Here is an early example of that phenomenon.

This is a question for my subconscious mind. What specific major problems to solve have I in this life?

Here is an answer. You have to make do with what you have. Striving is never right.

I need more information about the conditions under which I find myself operating. What is the significance of the fact that I seem to choose the development of the gay lifestyle in relation to making do with what I have?

You were gay before. Egypt. See the pyramid. There is a long, dark corridor leading to a tomb. You were a priest's assistant. You loved him. He gave you strength. There were rituals and ceremonies in which you were involved as an adolescent involving shoman—homosexual sex. You wanted to be the best in his eyes. Feel the feeling of awareness of youness. Stank smell. Yet mystery and awe in this place. You know there is more to life. This is your place, your calling—as a shoman. Making do. Your soul must evolve. It has much to learn. You want to see. Seeing takes great suffering.

I seem so confused about what I should do with this gay lifestyle. Should I adopt a solitary stance, not seeking a lifemate, should I go out and seek? Should I even be open to mating?

Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all things will be added unto you.

Did I not do this in the life in Egypt?

You were torn between the passions of the flesh and of the spirit as you are now.

What will purify me?

Meditation will.

Why have I always believed I am special, and how special am I? Am I connected with the second coming of Christ?

You are a part of the spiritual energy which will release Christ with a shout. As you release Christ in yourself so will his coming be closer. You are a channel for spiritual energy.

I want to emphasize that crude though this transcription may seem, there was much
more going on than just the typing. I had some vivid mental images of events in this past life. I could smell the odors of the ritual, feel the powerful emotions, see myself and others in strange Egyptian clothes. Somehow, I seemingly had access to a range of past experiences. Even today, these images come back to me not as memories of past imaginings, but as memories of past events.

It has been years since I played around with past lives. I don't seem to need this information right now. But over the course of several years I became aware of many past lives. (Notice, I didn't say “of my past lives.”) There was a life as a black overseer on a Louisiana plantation around the turn of the Century who committed suicide. Another life was lived as a free spirit who roamed the countryside in England during the Dark Ages. Another life in England was during Dickens’ time. That soul starved to death at an early age as a retarded street urchin. Stephen and I have been told the details of a former life we shared. All of these lifetimes have details which illuminate my present spiritual struggles. The Egyptian life has come up several times.

At this point, I take it as a matter of fact that all of us can contact these memories of past lives. In my own case, they seem to illuminate some particular struggle that I am having at a given time. They do this because many times it is easier to grasp a spiritual lesson in someone else's life than in your own—if you had learned the lesson, then you probably wouldn't need it.

However, I am very cautious indeed about saying that these lifetimes are my lifetimes. For one thing, there are other possible explanations. Jung, for example, held that one of the first signs of spiritual advancement was that the person could access memories in the “collective unconscious.” For another, I am trying not to limit my understanding of these phenomena by any fourth dimensional presupposition that I happen to hold. Many advanced spiritual perspectives, the Seth material, for example, have developed a concept of simultaneity—the idea that all lifetimes are occurring in the now. If this is true, then a conception of a soul sequentially going from one body to the next is not very helpful in understanding what is going on.

Finally, I have a terrible time getting in touch with my soul anyway, if it is indeed something separate from God. The “I” which I experience most of the time is my terrible ego—an agglomeration of limited strivings conditioned by this particular lifetime's set of lessons. I sometimes doubt that there is much in my ego that deserves to survive this life. I sometimes think that when this lifetime is over, it will be complete, and speak for itself. It won't need to come back again.

Let me put this a different way. There is a popular saying, “if only I could go back and live my life over knowing what I do now.” Most of us know that this is bullshit. None of us really want to live our life over. What we want is our youth back. Somehow, believing in reincarnation as a succession of the soul through bodies is like this. It is like thinking that we can go back and live our life over. But we can’t. In a different lifetime, things will be different. There will be other tests to master. The current awarenesses and plans that we have will only be relevant as instances of lessons we need to learn.

I don't think the ego survives human death. I think death is much more like waking up. The soul wakes up from the dream it was in. But even that isn't a good way to think of things, because the metaphor of time is still used, and time is an illusion. I simply can’t see things from this life from the point of view of a soul, let alone God. But somewhere down the road, some other human being may resonate to this lifetime, may draw insight and comfort from the lessons learned here. How it works, I can't tell you. That it works, I'm reasonably certain.

There is a final matter we must consider. It is the possibility that we each of us choose our own birth, life and death. As an old philosophical analyst, I can't help but think a bit critically about the verb “to choose.” Let us ask, then, if there is a sense of the verb “to choose” in which we choose our own circumstances.

It is clear to me that there is a sense in which we choose our own death. Obviously, lifestyle is related to length of life. I chose to smoke for ten years, and then I chose to stop smoking. The former choice deleted years from my life, the latter choice added years.

But what about critical illnesses like cancer and AIDS? One of the things I learned at the Shealy Clinic in Springfield, Missouri is that our attitude is a most important factor in fighting pain and illness. I succeeded in healing a ruptured disk without surgery. Others there were working on remitting their cancer. Pat Artrip is a thirty year survivor of Hodgkin’s Disease. She did this with no pituitary or thyroid function of her own. It was her determination that did it.

Pat also tells the story of her father's death. He was dying of cancer, but was holding on to life. When most of the family was gathered round his bed, Pat took her father's hand and said, among other things, “It's alright, Daddy, you can let go now.” And he took his last breath and died.

Byron chose his death. In 1985 his doctors had given him six months to live. The diagnosis was chemically induced chronic hepatitis. But I talked him into going to Shealy. He came back completely cured. He even started working out in the gym. I kidded him about becoming massive. When the AIDS diagnosis was given, I begged him to go to Shealy again. I gave him information again and again about a form of passive immunity treatment which was available in England. But his determination to drink and not to seek alternative therapy led him steadily downhill.

Now some health professionals will tell you that with an addicting illness like alcohol, choice is not involved. It's true that if you have spent your lifetime not making hard choices, that at a certain point you give up trying to make them. But what does that prove? At some point, you must have had a choice about the addicting behavior you were about to commit yourself to. Otherwise, let's just give up the idea of free choice altogether.

But what about the circumstances of our lives? Some people are born handicapped. Some people are born in poverty. Do we choose these? It is here that our common sense use of the word “to choose” will not serve us. ”Choice” usually implies awareness of alternatives and determination to follow one alternative. Even here, there is a great range of human responsiveness to limiting conditions. Chuck Nelson, a professor at SlUE has
been legally blind since early childhood. But he is a successful professor, of all things, of instructional technology. He builds beautiful furniture and has built himself a Japanese garden in his back yard. Some people refuse to remain in poverty. Others acquiesce or get enmeshed in the cycle of poverty. But it is clear to me that there are points along the line where they make this choice of lifestyle. Some of my liberal friends will be infuriated; I honor
their choice.

And finally, do we choose our birth, our parents? The question is, “Who is the ‘we’ here?” I've already discussed memories of past lives and stopped where my thinking got fuzzy. Now let me tell you a story, and you make up your own mind. My dear mother loved music. My dad did too. When she was first married, she bought herself an old piano and took the U. S. School of Music correspondence courses. She taught herself to play popular music very well. While she was pregnant with me, she played the music of Chopin and Beethoven, and dreamed of having a son who was a gifted pianist.

I am a gifted pianist. I have always been a gifted pianist. I did not learn this, I came into the world with it. I can hear any piano music once or twice and play it. In any key. I can transpose. I can learn new forms of music just like that. Songs spontaneously occur to me and I can write them down. Yet I've had very little formal training. When I was a child, I heard music very clearly in my mind. All the instruments, harmonies and melodies in a piece were transparent to me. My mother got her wish. God sent my mother her little piano player, of that I have no doubt.

Did I choose this mother, this family? Who is the “I” here? Let me put it this way. If a part of God, which is all the vibrations there are, did direct energy into that little embryo
that was me, don't you think that it was a part who loved music more than anything else? Didn't it “choose” me? Of course, I have no idea of how choice works at this level. And
of course, at this point in time, this is all metaphysical speculation. But if there is a part of God that activates us, let's call it “a soul,” is it any harder to believe that it continues to
send us signals and communications throughout our life. Our biggest problem is to learn to recognize these extra-material communications.

Finally, each of us builds a metaphysics, a theory of the universe and our relationship to it. I've built mine, and I honor yours.

August 15, 1989

Dear Byron:

It was great knowing you. See you again sometime, maybe. Love,

Jim

Afterword

I wrote the words in Chapters 1 through 13 at least 35 years ago. I find it fascinating that I can remember quite clearly these “New Age” adventures, and I believed at the time that I was closing in on constructing a new expanded view of the reality that my experiences had led me to believe. The New Age movement strove to removed the shackles of seeing the Universe through Isaac Newton’s eyes.

However, between that time (late 1980’s) and now, I believe a new focus intervened to move us in a different direction. Collectively, the human race evolved a new dimension of human thinking and communication: networked computer-assisted problem-solving and exploration. Already just as my book was finished, a rudimentary form of cyber reality had begun to develop with protocols like ARPANet, electronic bulletin boards, and gopher. With the invention of the World Wide Web in 1993, anyone with access to a web server could put documents on the web that could be accessed immediately by anyone anywhere in the world. They just needed an internet-conected computer and the skills and knowledge to use it. Throughout the 1990s first PDA’s (personal digital assistants) and then early smartphones, such as the Blackberry, widely used in business, continued to develop computer-like devices that were handheld. With the development of the iPhone in 2007, a person could essentially “browse the web” on their smart phone, which was a telephone and computer combined, and much more. Suddenly, cyberspace was put within reach of anyone with the economic or other means to own a smartphone.

An even more dramatic extension of cyberspace possibilities occurred with the development of Web 2.0, in which web pages are seen not as static documents to be read, but rather as portals to a variety of online interaction. Thus we have seen the development of social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat and TikTok in which users create and share interactive content from their own location on the web. An enormous community of online gaming has developed, and there are virtual communities that explore many other aspects of human experience. Almost any social group can have a presence in cyberspace. Far-flung familys can Zoom together on important family events. It is also possible to do one’s personal business online, including shopping and even meeting potential dates. This explosion of virtual communication has created an enormous gap between human generations, but this gap is sure to decrease as the older, computer-illiterate generation dies off.

Even now, human intellectual functioning comes to depend more and more not only on our own problem-solving abilities and the brain we were born with, but also external assistive devices, such as smart phones, laptop computers, and social online communities. Most children now have access to online learning resources at least as effective as their appointed teachers in school. On the other hand, a host of newly emerging social problems have resulted from this current state of technologically assisted communication. Young people are targeted by pedophiles and anarchists. Whole enterprises have developed to not only promote one political or religious point of view, but to undermine opposing points of view, even unto distributing distorted points of view, such as conspiracy theories. Websites instigate campaigns to ensnare teenage minds and adults who are mentally ill into destructive behavior supporting bigoted superiorist points of view. And of course, everone is at risk for many forms of cyber-crime: phone, email, and other scamming, hacking of social media identity, and phishing for personal information leading to identity theft.

Presently there is much debate about the newest form of technology-assisted problem solving: artificial intelligence (AI). Powerful networked computers are able to sort through voluminous mountains of data on a certain topic and come up with a convincing analysis of that topic. On the other hand, current AI techniques have been shown to regularly produce documents containing “facts” that have simply been made up by the process in order to reach the desired end. There is currently great controversy over whether or not AI will simply take over human decision making, and two camps have developed, the one advocating putting strict controls on AI, the other defending a more open, explorative approach to its development.

Yes, the human race has certainly been refocused since exploration of “the Aquarian Frontier” gained a widespread following a few decades ago. While one can still find astrologers, numerologists, past life readers, psychics and the like plying their trade—and possibly using the internet to advertise and conduct their business—the fact is that the steam that went out of the New Age movement of the 70s and 80s has found a new engine to power as the human race simultaneously creates and explores cyberspace.

But we must be quick to point out that there were some excellent goals embedded in the New Age approach to life that may even be farther from realization now than thirty years ago. This internet explosion has brought the nations of the world even closer together, so that every suffering face is potentially the subject of an online newscast. The fact is that the resources and the riches of the world are extremely unevenly divided. Not only that, history makes it clear that current inequities are the the result of the past unjust domination of some nations by other more powerful nations. So millions, perhaps even billions of people are suffering based on this unfair distribution. Because of the ubiquitous presence of the internet, everybody knows about this. People of privilege, both rich and not so rich, fear the encroachment of the poor of other nations and of their own nation on resources and property to which they have previously had advantageous access.

But this is far from the end of our current problems. Tens of millions of people, many of them from economically challenged communities, use of powerful, addictive drugs on a regular basis, and these drugs are often supplied by huge and powerful organized criminal enterprises. Some of these cartels are so powerful as to essentially have neutralized corrective actions by the countries involved. Conditions in these countries have become so dangerous for those living there, that daily, thousands of people emigrate to other less dysfunctional and more economically prosperous countries. This mass population movement is just a part of the current tendency for inequitable wealth in the world to redistribute. In our own country within communities of poverty, fueled by drug cartel, street gang rule, and the collapse of effective law enforcement, a new total disregard for human life has developed into homelessness, widespread substance abuse, car theft, and drive-by shootings.

There is also a world-wide attack on the relatively scarce democratic institutions of the world by forces that would reorganize around a dictatorial government where rewards are meted out based on whether individuals or organizations support the government in charge. Dictators, both would-be and actual, use lies, intimidation, collusion with enemy powers and vigilante action to secure or stay in power. They attempt to and sometimes successfully do use the resources of the democratic state for the very purpose of undermining democratic process. And these individuals are supported in many cases by large political blocks of supporters, who believe that democracy is mismanaged or has unfairly taken away opportunities for wealth acquisition that they want to secure for themselves.

The crisis of climate change also looms still larger; indeed, many people believe that it will be very hard to reverse the current movement to higher levels of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, and that widespread extremely destructive climate patterns are now in place for the foreseeable future. This climate change has almost certainly been brought about by a failure of the managers of our planet’s resources to guide their use of raw materials, particularly petroleum products, in accordance of the principle of sustainability. “Sustainability” indeed was one of the watch words of the New Age movement, which sought to anchor culture firmly in images of the beautiful natural order of the planet, sustaining itself for current and future generations.

It is difficult to see from this current vantage point how the human race is going to successfully evolve in these new directions while finding solutions for the obvious defects of current existence. It is even more difficult to discern any directions that all of this technology-augmented social reality is headed for and whether it can continue to evolve without serious problems continuing to develop. However, I find it instructive to reflect on my own evolution from a youth madly exploring Rosak’s Aquarian Frontier, through an aging gay libertarian who saw a dream of alternative sexual freedom crumble into a decade-long dirge of lost friends, into an avid advocate of computer assisted instruction with state wide visibility. Those early explorations, that time of withdrawing and reflection on death, and those later years of developing computer curricula for the public schools, all of these have better prepared me to understand my own growth and existence here on planet Earth.

Currently, I am struggling with this conundrum. I find that the more I focus on the very tangible problems of our current society, the more I feel a sense of powerlessnes and dispair about me, Jym Andris, being able to be an effective change agent. The only wisdom that I have gleaned from my long life experience about making “good trouble,” in the words of John Lewis, is that if you care enough to put time and energy on a good cause, it will make a difference, if you persist. But there are no guarantees. On the other hand, I find that the more I focus on the long view—watch a show on the achievements of the Webb Telescope, compare our current state of political disarray and conservative advance to other historical periods, think about the various different religious paths—the more peaceful and powerful I feel. I’m old enough to say that I had a good life, just one good life out of billions of lives. And I’m young enough to still have hope that in the long run, we won’t screw it up.

I should be finished, but since I have passed nine and one half decades here on planet earth, and I since can honestly say that I have achieved everything that I ever truly wanted in this life, I am going to be bold and offer some “after” advice in this Afterword. Be glad if your life is full of challenge and adversity, because it is how you deal with hard times that determines the quality of your life. Also, it is just when you are deep in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty that you must ask yourself who you are and what you want, and then go for it with all your might. More than that, when your luck turns, and things get easier, don’t throw away and forget about what you have learned about yourself, but rather honor it and cherish it and protect it from all harm. My life is filled with examples of this philosophy, and I can truly say that I am happy and fulfilled because of it.

When I was about eleven, the boys in my schoolyard bullied me relentlessly because I was brilliantly smart, and I played with both boys and girls, and I was terrible at sport. One day as I coming home from school and being picked at by a boy my own age and size, I came the end of my rope, and a rage raised up in me so powerful that I knocked this boy to the ground and began to beat him with all my might. Fortunately for both of us, an older boy pulled me off of him, saying, “Jimmie, stop, you’ll kill him.” And suddenly I felt sorry for Richard. But I was never picked on again.

When I was fifteen I started up the stairs to go to the bathroom. My mother was at the top of the stairs, suitcase packed, dressed up. I said, “Mom, where are you going?’ She said, “I’m leaving, Jimmy, I can’t live with your father anymore.” I fell on the steps in front of her and begged her not to leave. “Don’t leave, mom, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” My mother relented, and the family unit was saved.

A more subtle example of sticking to your guns is my establishing my sexual orientation and gender identity. I was lucky to be raised in a family where there was no doubt in my mind that I was loved. But I was equally clear that my parents and other significant people in my life thought that being queer was just about the worst thing that could happen to a kid. And so I remained in the closet while trying to find a way to pose myself as I moved through life. But I finally begain to realize that my friends and family, who had been so good to me as a carefully posed “normal” man, were never going to give me one bit of help in discovering what kind of alternative person I was. And so I had to risk all these first times—I had to walk in to a gay bar, I had to ask a guy for a date, I had to walk into a gay church, I had to raise affirmative action issues with my place of employment, I had to explore sexual options, I had to accept a proposal to share my life, I had to propose marriage, and later in life, I had to walk into a nonbinary support group. And so I learned, step by step, that if you don’t want to live a pedestrian life, then you have to learn how to drive. And queer people have to do that for themselves.

My final example of following the advice I gave above is this. I found a man to share my life with when I was in my early 40s and we worked mostly together to make our relationship work for nearly 40 years. We had ten good years, and then Stephen began to be plagued with bad health and bad luck. Eventually, I became his full time, dedicated caregiver. I can truthfully say that my commitment never wavered, and I believe that his commitment did not waver, either. Always I tried to be a person of faith, but from time to time, my commitment to that flagged. As I helplessly watched Stephen enter his final decline, which took about half a year to evolve, I found myself one day literally begging God to do something to help the situation. My critical mind immediately threw this at me: “You’re a hypocrite; how can you beg for something from someone whose existence you so frequently doubt?” And then I turned my life around by answering myself this way. “Yes, I am a hypocrite. I beg God when the chips are down, and so, from now on, I’m going to thank God when the chips are up.”

Consequent to this decision, I have begun to experience this Universe as a loving place, this Universe which put life on this planet. Life is love, for sure. And so Love is evolving in this Universe. It’s a clear message about my job here from now on. I just have to bring a little more love and light into the world every day, if I can.

I see now that in my life, I never stopped co-creating reality with God. In my younger years, I was so busy uncovering, discovering and creating my life that the many techniques of achieving altered states of consciousness and mentally influencing outcomes simply appealed to me as additional resources I could explore on the way to success. I even used a “Most Wanted List” for decades: I made a list of the ten most important goals for myself and periodically updated that list. But once I settled down with Stephen and the steady job at SIUE as professor, my explorations became more collaborative, and so offered less opportunity to use such unconventional approaches. Then as I reached my retirement age, I found myself much more engrossed in constructing the story of my life and telling others tales of what I had been learning in this life.

What I learned is that life is a fucking miracle, and all we need to do is to give it the respect and attention that it deserves. From that, everything else flows. God is in the fucking miracle.

References

Itzhak Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum: on the Mechanics of Consciousness, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977, p. 120.

Eric Berne, Games People Play, 1964.

Jean Bolen, The Tao of Psychology, San Francisco: Harper &

Row, 1979.

Barbara B. Brown, New Mind, New Body, New York: Bantam Books, 1974.

Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, New York: Bantam, 1976.

Fritjof Capra, Turning Point, New York: Simon & Schuster,1982.

Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power, New York: Pocket Books, 1976.

Haridas Chaudhuri, The Evolution of Integral Consciousness, Wheaton, Il.: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1977

de Chardin, Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, 1955.

The Course in Miracles.

Richard De Mille, Castaneda's Journey, Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1976.

Amaury de Riencourt, The Eye of Shiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1981.

Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, Boston: distributed by Hougton Mifflin Company, 1980

Future Science, ed. by John White and Stanley Krippner, New York: Anchor Books 1977.

Thomas Harris, I’m OK, You’re OK, 1967.

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, 1971.

Derek and Julia Parker, The Compleat Astrologer, 1971.

Ken Keyes, Handbook to Higher Consciousness, 1972.

Joseph Chilton Pearce, Magical Child, New York: Bantam New Age Books, 1977

Hiroshi Motoyama with Rande Brown, Science and the Evolution of Consciousness, Brookline, MA: Autumn Press, 1978

Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Handbook of PSI Discoveries, London: Abacus, 1977.

Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Superlearning, New York: Delacorte Press and The Confucian Press, 1979.

Theodore Roszak, The Unfinished Animal, New York: Harper & Rowe, 1975.

Mark Satin's excellent book New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society, New York: Delta Books, 1978.

Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life: the hypothesis of formative causation, Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1981, second edition 1985.

Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: an Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, 1943.

Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability, New York: Dell, 1977.

William Irwin Thompson, Passages about Earth,

Colin Wilson, The Occult, New York:

Vintage Books, 1973.

Fred Alan Wolf, Taking the Quantum Leap, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981.

Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: an Overview of the New Physics, New York: Bantam, 1979

Appendix

[Ed. note: This material was deleted from the end of Chapter 8, because it is densely technical astrological analysis and doesn’t contribute to the current purpose of distributing the book. The analysis was actually never completed as indicated by the ellipsis at the end of the material. ]

I've left out people and places that I really care about, but I'm ready to leave the Dark Ages of my life. However, there is one matter that I want to spend considerable time developing. This is a book on my spiritual development. One of the stages in this development has been my awareness of astrology. Many years into the seventies, I encountered an astrological explanation of the years from 1960 to 1970, and I'd like to share it with you in the remaining pages of this chapter. One caveat: you may appreciate this section more after you have read about the year 1973 in my life.

Very few people know about a phenomenon called “solar progressions.” Yet I have frequently found them to be an accurate indicator of the phases of a person's life. In fact, in 1980 I wrote a computer program to predict the solar progressions of a person's life. I have run this program for tens of people. No one has told me that it didn't apply to their life, although some have said “It's a little vague.”

Nearly everyone knows their sun sign. For example, I am a Sagittarius. What this means is that on the day of my birth, the sun as seen from earth was in the astrological constellation of Sagittarius. (Due to the procession of the equinoxes, the astrological constellation is rotated about 30 degrees from the actual configuration of stars by that name.)

But one can be more precise than this. Each month has about 30 days, and each constellation has about 30 degrees. The constellations start on around the 20th day of each month. In my case, I was born on December 3. Sagittarius starts on about November 21. So the sun was at about 12 degrees of Sagittarius when I was born. (12 days between November 21 and December 3).

What very few people know is that each sign is divided in to three roughly equal decans of 10 degrees each. Each one of these decans has a different planetary ruler. And while Jupiter is the traditional ruler of Sagittarius, the other two decans have Mars and the Sun as their rulers, respectively. So that three Sagittarians born in the first, second, and third third of the month, will have somewhat different influences in their basic character development.

For example, in general Sagittarians love to travel far and wide (more so than say, Virgos), are freedom-loving and explorative, have a certain frankness about them, and make friends easily from all walks of life.

Now my friend, Tom Manuel, who was born in the first decan of Sagittarius, typifies this approach to life. He traveled all over the world, making friends wherever he went. He loved a good adventure and tried several risky businesses. After his divorce in 1975, he remained happily unmarried. If you ask him for the truth, he will tell you exactly what he thinks.

By contrast, I am a second decan Sagittaurian. This makes Mars my ruler, and in fact gives me Aries tinges. So while I share the above qualities with Tom, I have also got the Arian directness in interpersonal relationships that comes from the war-like Mars. Before I learned to “temper”my responses, I had a terrible temper and had earned a reputation as “abrasive.“

My friend, Merrill Proudfoot, is a third decan Sagittarian. He and Beethoven were born on December 16. The Sun is the ruler here. Merrill, too, has traveled far and wide, and has remained unmarried and unmated all his life. He and I both love philosophy, which is another characteristic of the "Sadge." However, the Sun, which rules Leo, gives a certain regal pretension to the personality. Leos like to shine their light on others, and they like to take the lead.

Back to solar progressions. In astrology, the sun progresses one degree around the Zodiac for every year of the person's life. Since I was born at 12 degrees of Sagittarius (that is, 2 degrees of the second decan of Sagittarius), it took 8 years for my sun to progress out of the influence of Mars. After that, it progressed naturally into the third decan, which is the Sun's domain, and stayed there until I was 18. During this time period, I definitely had a sunny disposition. I loved to play the piano and sing and smiled a lot when doing this. I have already told you about the leadership I showed in my high school peer group. People tended to like me. I remember one time in the fifth grade they had a magazine contest, and I sold more magazines than all the other children in the school put together. They had a graph of the sales of the six grades, and the fifth grade bar went off the top of the graph.

Now our theory takes a complicated turn. When the sun progresses out of a sign, as mine did at age 18, it enters another sign. The progression follows these rules: “fire- >earth->air->water” and “individual->social->universal.” Since I was universal fire (Sagittarius), at age 18 I progressed to universal earth (Capricorn).

When the sun progresses out of a sign, sometime in the first thirty years of a person's life, a crisis occurs, and the stage is set for the next ten, twenty, and thirty years. It is always a crisis because a person is born into a sign to instantiate certain qualities. The next element in the cycle will inhibit those qualities to varying degrees.

In my case, earth puts out fire. That is exactly what happened. The sunny disposition that I had had in high school was snuffed out by the Capricornian earth. I did indeed crawl into a hole and stay there until age 28. But there was even more repression in store for me. Saturn rules first decan Capricorn. I was receiving winter vibrations in my twenties. It was cold in that hole! Saturn means discipline, austerity, a certain dourness to the personality, serious pursuit. Now mind you, I didn't see all this when I was going through it. I thought astrology was pure bunk. But it does fit.

I was age 28 in 1967, and that is about as far into the hole as I crawled. However, it took a few years to crawl back out. Entering the doctoral program was definitely the step that ended up landing me the job I have now, and that occurred in 1967. By 1969, two years into the next decan, which was ruled by Venus, I had begun to deal with the possibility of a love life for myself. My personal renaissance was about to begin!

For those of you who want to work this out for yourself, the Zodiac is composed, in this order, of Aries (individual fire), Taurus (individual earth), Gemini (individual air), Cancer, (individual water), Leo (social fire), Virgo, (social earth), Libra, (social air), Scorpio, (social water), Sagittarius, (universal fire), Capricorn (universal earth), Aquarius (universal air), and Pisces (universal water).

If you were born in the last third of the month, your first crisis occurs approximately (51 - your birthday) years after you were born. If you were born in the first two thirds of the month, your first crisis occurs approximately (21 - your birthday) years after you were born. Using myself as an example, I was born on the 3rd, so 21-3=18, which was the time of a major crisis. In either case you will cycle at that time in the order of the Zodiac given above.

Figure 1 gives the planetary rulership for each decan of each sign. You can figure out your decan within your sign approximately by this rule: First third of the month, second decan, second third of the month, third decan, last third of the month, first decan. Using myself as an example, I was born in the first third of the month, so I am a second decan Sagittarius. This makes my ruler Mars.

A first decan person goes through two other rulerships, in accordance with the table below, before they encounter their first major life crisis. These transitions will occur at (your birthday - 31) years of age and your birthday - 41) years of age. A second decan person goes through one other rulership, in accordance with the table below, before they encounter their first major life crisis. This transition will occur at (11 - your birthday) years of age In my case, the Sun was ruling planet for the decade beginning at age (11 - 3 = 8). A third decan person goes directly into their first major life crisis without any intervening rulership. Rules for determining this date have already been given earlier.

The second major life crisis occurs 30 years from the first major life crisis. That cycle continues in accordance with the Zodiacal cycle. In my case, I am just now undergoing …